Divergence: Neo-Saiyanism
by BCTheEntity
Summary: A well-known story takes an unprecedented turn, resulting in the creation of a hybrid species unlike any previously seen in the Dragonball universe. OC WARNING.
1. Prologue A - Fragmentation

**Prologue A - Fragmentation**

We find ourselves at the scene of a vaguely familiar sight: an alien planet by name of Plant, upon which two races foreign to humanity (yet eerily similar in form) battle for control. On the one side of combat, the Tuffles: very short, to deal with the planet's immense gravity; technologically advanced; and, for the most part, relatively intellectual. On the other side, the Saiyans: primitive, monkey-tailed warriors with access to a mysterious force known as "ki"; significantly less intelligent than their opponents, and far fewer in number, but led in battle by their strongest and smartest, a man known only as Vegeta. For years now, the two sides have been locked in a seemingly-eternal struggle, the innate power of the one side matched by the war technologies of the other. In mere months, though, this will change: a full moon, only showing itself once every hundred years, will incite a great transformation in the Saiyans, amplifying their power tenfold as they transform into monstrous ape-like giants.

In the universe we know, this is the trigger for the extinction of the Tuffle race. In a single night, the Oozaru wipe out the Tuffles, and the Saiyans claim the planet for their own, christening it "Vegeta" after their leader and newfound king. The Saiyans, after subsequent encounters with the planet of Arcose and its inhabitants, and their annexation into the empire of Lord Frieza, are ultimately annihilated alongside their planet by a titanic, sun-like ball of energy, leaving but a few members behind - some destined to continue the legacy of their race in humanity's embrace, others merely to die off as fatalities to the lucky few who pass their genes onward through time.

Not so in this continuum...

* * *

><p>"King Mello!"<p>

"Hm? What do you want?"

The Tuffle king turned from the latest set of battle reports before him to face the guard who had called his attention. Grossly overweight, and white-haired with age, Mello was nonetheless one of the more intelligent members of their race, and under normal circumstances, interrupting his train of thought would be considered a rather grave error, to put it mildly.

"A scout is here to see you, your majesty. Says he has important information."

"He can wait," the royal responded, frowning in consternation. "Or tell him to see one of my advisors or generals, if it's that important."

"He says this can't wait, and it has to be you he talks to."

"I'm _busy_ right now. This war won't organise itself, you know."

"...I'll talk some sense into him, your majesty."

The guard left the room, and for a couple of minutes, the king was allowed to continue with his ministrations. To his annoyance, though, the guard swiftly returned.

"He's very insistent that he talk to you right now, your majesty. His words."

For a moment, all was quiet; then King Mello sighed. "Send him in, then," he responded. "I suspect it'll be quicker dealing with him than trying to get him sent off."

"At once, your majesty."

The guard left the room once again, and a moment later returned with a young turquoise-haired male in tow. King Mello slowly eyed the man, who it seemed was only just recovering from some form of exhaustion. Maybe this was more important than he'd first anticipated - his generals were told to keep their scouts in top condition, so the fact that one of them had worn himself out so much said a lot by itself.

"And what, scout, is so important that you must charge into the royal palace and interrupt my decision-making?"

"They... can transform."

"...what?"

"The Saiyans... they can transform into... I don't know what, but I overheard a group of them talking about it... nearly got myself killed to bring this to you, your majesty."

"...can they, now. And why is this a concern?"

"Their ki increases when they transform. I don't know how much it increases, but... from what they said, it could be anywhere between two and one hundred times. More than enough to... to crush us, at any rate."

"...and you can verify this with another source?"

"Sadly, no, but I doubt they'd be making anything up, your highness. They said it'd happen to all of them at once in a few month's time... does anything significant happen in a few month's time?"

"Not as far as I..."

Mello stopped himself mid-sentence. Now that he came to think of it, there was the centennial full moon to consider. It had been close to full for a long time now, but only for one night, eight months from now, would it reach total efficacy; in any other circumstance, the Tuffles would celebrate the night quite raucously, in contrast to their race's normally conserved attitude. In a war scenario such as this, though, the date in question would pass as almost an afterthought. Apparently, it would hold more significance than he'd first imagined. This was nowhere near certain, of course, but if what the scout had heard was true... quite suddenly, the king smiled - closed-lipped, but holding some degree of approval to it.

"You may have just saved our race, young man."

* * *

><p>Four months later, King Mello found himself wandering down a metal-lined corridor, flanked by two of his guards. Doorways were spaced evenly along each side; within the connecting rooms, scientists performed experiments with weaponry, defenses, and other, more esoteric subjects. This was a secret laboratory, lying hidden beneath the Tuffle king's palace; if the Saiyans knew it existed, they would surely do everything in their power to uproot and destroy it, for what lay in here was perhaps the key to winning this war at last. Soon enough, Mello and his guards reached a doorway at the end of the corridor; the king keyed in the entry code, then passed through the threshold alone once the doorway had opened.<p>

A strange scene lay before him. The room itself was not necessarily overwhelmingly different to the previous corridor, in that it was entirely plated in reflective metal; however, the area it encompassed was quite massive. Rows of computers monitored by Tuffle scientists were present along each wall, and the entire place was lit up by two slightly different green hues. The source of one of these would be immediately obvious to any intruder: taking up the majority of the space was a giant machine, consisting of a yellow flower-like hemisphere, a pillar of glass from which emanated a bright green light, illuminating the area in an almost sickly manner, and another metallic yellow construct, this time a great ring suspended some distance above the first yellow shape. This was the supercomputer known as Hatchiyack - designed to, through some abstract process even Mello could only guess at, condense the hatred that the Tuffles felt for the Saiyan race into raw ki, which could then be utilised for any purpose desired. Right now, small amounts of ki were constantly being siphoned off of it, that the scientists located here might use it to amplify the weaponry used by their soldiers on the field; with no additional drain, however, the device would eventually gather the energy required to fuel some form of derivative superweapon, the likes of which were currently unknown to Mello. Standing before the device, now appraising the arrival of his king alongside a number of his lessers, was the single greatest scientist of the Tuffle race: Dr. Raichi. Dressed simply, possessed of long white hair growing from both his head and his upper lip, and perhaps even older than Mello himself, the man was without a doubt a gift to the Tuffles from whatever deities existed in the universe; Mello doubted that they would have survived for so long without his constant contributions to the war effort.

"Dr. Raichi!" Mello began, "So good to see you again. Everything is going well, I presume?"

"Indeed. Hatchiyack is continuing to gather ki at an increasing rate, and the defensive measures are improving at an increasing rate, of course bolstered by the ever-present time limit. We should be able to implement appropriately strong energy shields around our cities within three months."

"Excellent... but you don't seem particularly pleased with yourself. You're doing great things right now."

Raichi frowned for a moment.

"...a group of Saiyans cornered my granddaughter the other day."

Mello's eyes widened in shock. "Oh, no... is she...?"

"She's alive, but hospitalised. And... receiving treatment for mental trauma."

"...they didn't."

"I'd rather not speak of what they 'didn't'."

The monarch winced in sympathy. "I understand. Well. At least take comfort in knowing that Hatchiyack will benefit, and in turn, help to deal with them sufficiently."

"...hrm. I'd rather we found a way to deal with the whole race as soon as possible, but short-term solutions don't present themselves easily for such a problem. For now, Hatchiyack will have to do."

"Actually, I hear you've begun work on a secondary project of the same sort. I see that these rumors are not unfounded, and that whatever you're doing is progressing nicely..."

What Raichi was doing was linked to the second source of green light in the cavernous space: four tubes of blue-green growth-accelerating liquid, equally spaced around Hatchiyack, with each containing what appeared to be some form of giant glowing cell, connected to the tops and bottoms of each tube via fine strands growing out from the cells themselves. At their mention, the doctor allowed himself a thin smile, and motioned for Mello to follow him to the nearest.

"I'm proud of these, actually. I consider them my babies, to an extent, but the irony in that name couldn't be greater."

As Mello drew nearer to the tubes in question, he could see that the cells themselves were pulsing slightly, in time with the subtle increase and decrease of the glows they emitted, consistently pushing forward and back against the glow of the giant supercomputer, almost a simplified visual mirror of the constant struggle between Saiyan and Tuffle that had been going on for nearly ten years.

"What are they?"

"When they're finished, they'll be biomechanical parasites of a stem cell-esque nature, primarily Tuffle in ancestry, but capable of using ki to a far greater extent than the Saiyans ever could."

"Interesting... which Tuffle have you based them off of?"

"Oh, that's the good part," Raichi replied with a chuckle. "All of them."

"Pardon?" Mello asked, slightly shocked at the claim.

"We sent out swarms of microscopic drones several weeks ago," Raichi began as he started pacing around Mello, "to spread across the planet and gather DNA samples from every living Tuffle encountered, then transmit the resulting binary codes to Hatchiyack's servers for addition to the biomachines' own genetic structure. So far, we've got the genetic codes of what we estimate to be around seventy percent of the Tuffle race, including all available soldiers and scientists. And, of course, all those of royal ancestry. Sorry for not getting your permission first, but we figured you'd want to be included in those who were preserved in their genetic code."

For a moment, Mello was speechless.

"...when did the drones get to-"

"Trust me, your majesty," the doctor noted, "you wouldn't be able to tell, even in hindsight." Mello sighed in frustration, then refocused on the topic at hand.

"And pray tell, when will these biomachines be ready?"

"If all goes according to plan, they should reach maturity- and full power- roughly a week after the full moon, though they should become active a day beforehand. Oh, and before you ask, we only have the one Saiyan donor: Vegeta. We shouldn't need any more than that."

Mello nodded. It made sense - Vegeta was the strongest and smartest Saiyan currently alive. Using anyone else would be a waste of resources. That did spark a question, though...

"If we're only using Vegeta as a donor for strength and intellect, wouldn't it make sense to only use the smartest and most resourceful Tuffle as the other donor?" He gestured to Raichi at this point, but the scientist merely chuckled and shook his head.

"Oh, that's not why we're including the entire Tuffle race. I mentioned that you'd probably want your genetic code preserved, your majesty; the same is going to apply to the entire race. Worst-case scenario, every Tuffle on the planet dies. Then, because we have four sources from which to recreate any deceased Tuffles, the race reforms from apparent nothingness, takes the Saiyans by surprise, and reclaims Planet Plant once more. They're more like mothers than babies in that respect, you see: violent in defense of their kin, and able to produce more like them. Hence the irony."

"So we have five superweapons now: whatever Hatchiyack will be used to power, plus the, ah..."

"Call them 'Babies' for now. For irony's sake, like I said. We'll probably find a more suitable name eventually... maybe 'Mother' will work well enough, in hindsight."

"Plus the four Baby drones. And with the defensive barriers soon to be available for installation..."

"Everything should come to a head in four months' time, your majesty."

"Alright, then. Good work. Carry on."

The royal turned to leave the room. He didn't want to tell Raichi, but he felt almost disturbed by the existence of the Babies. He could only wonder how powerful they'd be at their full power... and, secretly, was glad he wasn't a Saiyan right now.

* * *

><p>Another four months passed. For several days, the Saiyan army had been eerily confident in their assaults on the Tuffle's forces, seemingly becoming more and more reckless for reasons that the rank-and-file could not understand. The higher-ups, of course, knew the truth, but were sworn to secrecy on the matter; of course, the troops were not incapable of noticing the difference in their behaviour, and began mirroring it, becoming rather more stressed and suspicious than usual by both occurences. Then, precisely one day before the full moon was scheduled to appear, an order was sent out that every Tuffle on the planet was to retreat to within the boundaries of the nearest Tuffle city, there to wait until the all-clear was given. The soldiers didn't understand the logic behind this, but were at least relieved that they'd be off the field for at least one day; on the part of the Saiyans, they believed that Tuffle morale had finally broken, and the retreat to the cities was a last-ditch attempt by their coward leaders to save their people. So much the better, then, when the transformation finally happened; a segregated race would be a more easily genocided race.<p>

Finally, the time arrived. Small groups of Saiyans had been posted to patrol around each Tuffle city; Vegeta himself, accompanied by a squadron of his five most elite soldiers, stood face to face with the capital. Vegeta believed that he could've taken it out alone once he became an Oozaru; however, he'd decided that more men would always be a good choice in a situation such as this.

No risks taken. Surely, the Tuffle race would die off tonight.

At last, the full moon arose from beyond the far horizon. The Saiyans of Vegeta's squadron stared at the moon for about half a minute; then, without warning, they simultaneously erupted out of the rags that substituted for clothes as their musculature and bone structure amplified in size, hair sprouted across their entire bodies, and their eyes were rendered a glaring shade of solid, bloody red.

As one, the newly-realised Oozarus charged immense balls of ki within their mouths, then fired them at the city in a single titanic beam of destruction, as had been planned. The resulting spherical explosion seemingly covered the entire city; surely, Vegeta thought, nothing could have withstood such an attack.

And yet, when the dust cleared, the city was seemingly unharmed. _Impossible,_ an unbelieving Vegeta thought to himself. _They've just projected an illusion or something; everything behind it is a crater by now!_ And yet, logic told him, whatever was projecting the illusion would also have been destroyed in the blast wave if it were within the city itself. No, he had to face the facts: the city had survived unscathed, despite the power behind the Great Apes' combined attack.

But, he reasoned to himself, it was almost certain that it would not survive another.

"Again."

* * *

><p>"How are the shields holding up, Raichi?"<p>

"Well enough, your majesty. The excess ki in Hatchiyack's system should be more than enough to hold the Saiyans at bay for the time being. Though..."

Mello frowned as Raichi hesitated. "Is something wrong, doctor?"

"I've been doing calculations, and I fear that with the current amount of ki we have stored, we may not be able to keep the shield up for the whole night. And if we go down, so does everyone else..."

"Gh... damn it. So all will be for naught if they break the barrier..."

"That being said, that outcome doesn't necessarily account for any additional ki generated beyond the norm, and whilst it's not necessarily going to happen, it may be that those inside the cities will hate the Saiyans all the more for trying to destroy their homes."

"...so we still have a chance?"

"We may do, if everyone hates them enough. We don't necessarily need too much additional ki; I myself have been considering every horrific act that they have performed in the last few months, which I hope will be generating significantly more ki than usual."

"Well, then. We can only hope."

_Keep hating them, my people,_ Mello silently implored. _Hate like you've never hated before._

* * *

><p><em>Hours later...<em>

The scene of the Tuffles' capital city was an interesting one. Five Saiyan warriors rested near the ground, observant of the sun rising and the moon setting at the same time, utterly exhausted from their attempts to break the shield surrounding the city, and unashamedly nude for their abrupt size change whilst in the Oozaru state. Only their leader continued to assault the barrier - long since drained of ki, Vegeta was reduced to throwing massive punches at the barrier, which, whilst more than enough to annihilate even a lesser Saiyan in their normal state, simply could not break through.

"Just give it up, sir!" one of them called up to him, possessing a shock of black hair directly atop his head, his mouth framed by a thin moustache. "The moon is setting, you're never going to get through in time."

"Screw... you... Nappa..." the giant Vegeta responded between punches, red eyes glazed with effort. "I'll... get through... even... if... it kills me!"

Alas, it was not to be; for even as he said these words, the moon finally sunk below the horizon, and Vegeta's Great Ape form subsided, leaving behind the naked, goatee'd Saiyan, who fitfully continued to assault the wall for a few moments more, before accepting defeat, and, with reluctance, lowering himself to the ground.

He'd failed. This was their best chance to destroy the Tuffles once and for all, and he'd failed. Whether or not the same could be said for the other cities... who was he kidding, if all of the barriers were this tough, there was no way the other soldiers had gotten through.

"Come along. We're done here."

* * *

><p>Within the laboratory below the capital, the scientists were rejoicing. We've won, they cried, we've won! Which wasn't strictly incorrect - in holding off six extremely powerful Saiyans, a sort of victory had been achieved that day, if only a temporary one, and reports showed that nearly every other city was intact too. One or two had been destroyed by higher concentrations of Great Apes than might otherwise have been planned for, but on the whole, the barriers had proven an overwhelming success. Many of the scientists were hugging one another, or breaking down into tears of joy and fatigue from lack of sleep; Mello, for his part, had embraced a number of the others in the room, and even Raichi was caught up in the moment, performing a small victory dance with his hands to celebrate the occasion.<p>

All thoughts of victory, though, were cut off by a loud blaring noise that lasted for no more than five seconds.

"Ah," Raichi exclaimed, "that'll be the Mother Drones."

The four tubes, which had for so long illuminated the room alongside Hatchiyack's own light, suddenly went dim, revealing child-like silhouettes within. The liquid containing them drained away, and they simultaneously opened, their occupants walking out slowly, to stand in a line between the supercomputer and the doorway into the room.

The Mother Drones, renamed from their working title of "Baby", were strange entities indeed. For starters, their heads were a very odd shape, almost conical in nature but for the rounded ends. And for another thing, they were all _blue_, though in a very specific pattern: the head and upper thorax of each drone were a lighter shade of blue (with the result that the heads appeared to be made of some form of slime), whilst the neck, arms, and remainder of the bodies all possessed a deeper hue. Furthermore, red and gold bands wrapped around their wrists, ankles, shoulders, and the backs of their heads, and each drone possessed, not eyes that could pass for Tuffle or even Saiyan, but blank blue visors that reflected black in the sickly light that now dominated the room.

Many of the scientists were shocked at how utterly alien these entities looked. The liquid, combined with the glow from the developing drones, had obscured their features up until now; yet here they were, in all of their biomechanical glory, ready to take on the Saiyans whenever they were commanded to.

"Doctor Raichi..." Mello began. "If I might ask, how the hell did you get them to look like this?"

"Minor alterations to their initial genes, before the addition of Tuffle and Saiyan DNA, your majesty."

"And how strong are they?"

In response, Raichi pulled out a scouter, and handed it to the nearest scientist, who placed it over his left eye and turned it on, readying it to measure power levels.

"Mother One, please begin powering up to your maximum level."

The drone on the far left entered a pose not dissimilar to that many Saiyans took when powering up, and silently began increasing its power, an aura of reddish-white energy enveloping it.

"And what does the scouter say, Doctor Grabe?"

"Uh... t-two thousand and rising... three thousand..."

Already, the others in the room were impressed. Most Saiyans never rose above a power level of 600, and even that was considered hideously strong by Tuffle standards. To have nearly hextupled that in mere seconds...

But the drone was not finished yet.

"A little faster, Mother One, if you would."

"...woah! Seven thousand and rising... ten thousand..."

"A touch more."

"Fifteen... _twenty five_... ho-holy crap-!"

At this point, the scouter exploded in the unfortunate scientist's face, sending shards of glass into his eye, and resulting in a string of curses and pained yelling, ended with the statement of "We really need to get safeties on these things! Like, fuses or something, so they don't freaking _explode_..."

"Duly noted, Grabe. I suggest you find a medic now, to get yourself fixed up."

"Th-thank you..."

The doctor promptly left the room in search of a medical officer, leaving everyone stunned at the new droids. Mello eventually broke the silence with "T... twenty five _thousand?!_"

"Oh, that's just a quarter of their power, your highness. At this level, they'll easily cap off at a hundred thousand units, and even more than that once they hit maturity."

Not a jaw remained undropped in the room. A hundred thousand units... it was said that Vegeta's own power level was ten thousand, and having remotely examined his ki signature whilst in the Oozaru form, they'd seen his power level top off at around the same level as the droid could supposedly reach. In other words, the infant form of Raichi's super weapon - it could be described as nothing less - was as powerful as Vegeta at his strongest. And they had _four_ of the droids at hand. It was unthinkable to most of them what kind of power they now held.

"A thought occurs, Raichi." Mello continued soberly. "If the droids have just now finished growing into a usable state, and Vegeta and his men just finished their assault..."

"Then we can send one after them and get Vegeta back here for interrogation or the like. I accounted for that possibility, your majesty. Mother One, take a scouter, initiate launch sequence, find Vegeta, return him to the palace's dungeons alive, and guard him until further notice."

Quite abruptly, one of the scouters seemed to vanish from the nearby stockpile in the corner of the room, and Mother One apparently teleported from its place in the line into its original tube, scouter on face; the tube closed up, then reinforced itself as a metal barrier slid down from the ceiling, positioning itself between the glass and Mother One. A blue glow was briefly seen through the metal, and then shot up out of sight. The metal tube retracted itself, and the glass was left empty.

"...and pray tell, where does the launch sequence send the Mother Drones?"

"Straight up, your majesty. Up, and out."

* * *

><p>A loud <em>whump<em> drew the attention of the retreating Saiyans, who turned to look back at the capital city. In the distance, an oval-like shape could be seen rising up, and up, and up... and all of a sudden split and fell back to the ground in two pieces, a loud-ish _crack_ reaching the Saiyans' ears seconds later. Left behind, motionless in the air, was some form of humanoid entity that could barely be made out from here, small as it was.

"Er... orders, sir?"

"Nappa, go investigate."

"Yes, sir."

The bulky Saiyan began heading towards the entity in question, but got no more than two hundred meters before the being... _teleported_ was the only way most of the observers could describe it, though Vegeta just barely made out the motion involved in such an act of speed. Before anyone could react, the being apparently turned to liquid, then... melded into Nappa's body? It certainly looked very intimate from Vegeta's standpoint, and quite shortly, the other being was completely gone. Nappa, meanwhile, simply hovered in the air, though it seemed he had gained one of the Tuffles' scouters from somewhere or other. Cautiously, Vegeta flew over to the young general, eventually hovering around Nappa's form to look at him from the front. Nothing had changed, it seemed, though his facial expression was rather more blank than usual. Or maybe he just never noticed before without the scouter... or the weird-looking eyes? He swore those had sharpened up, despite the expression.

"Hey, Nappa, are you oka-"

A turn, a flash of light, and the offending elite was instantaneously vaporised. Immediately, the other three Saiyans opened fire on Nappa, with Vegeta providing a physical assault from behind; yet nothing seemed to phase the errant Saiyan now, and with just three more flashes, only Vegeta remained to damage Nappa, and even he was caught by the much larger Saiyan, his wrists trapped within Nappa's massive hands. Something was wrong here; Nappa had never been at even half of Vegeta's strength, yet here he was now, restraining him like an overly tight vice. Had the strange entity possessed Nappa somehow...?

"You are Vegeta."

...what kind of moronic question was that?

"Of course I'm Vegeta, you simpleton!" the Saiyan leader exclaimed, violently writhing in a fruitless attempt to free himself. "Unhand me at once!"

Instead of following the order, Nappa opened his mouth and began emitting an unearthly, almost metallic screech that jarred Vegeta's senses in a quite horrendous manner. At the same time, a blue-silver fluid began bubbling out of Nappa's mouth, nose and eyes, and for a moment, it appeared that the latter consisted of nothing more than blue-tinted lenses.

Vegeta's scream of terror was cut short almost immediately.

* * *

><p>"...and you decided to do that because...?"<p>

"I believed that it would be the best way to follow orders whilst minimising collateral damage, Doctor Raichi."

A day had passed, and Vegeta and Nappa had remained within the dungeon (typically dungeon-like in nature, though perhaps not intended for prisoners the size of a Saiyan) of the Tuffle king's palace in an almost suspiciously calm manner. It was only when Raichi and Mello came to interrogate them that they realised this was due to Mother One's possession - the Saiyan leader through direct infestation, and his subordinate via an implanted seed that mind controlled the unfortunate whom it sprouted within. After clothing the two Saiyans - who, being comparatively huge, required an excessive amount of cloth by Tuffle standards, and not the rags they normally wore either - they had instead found themselves interrogating Mother One regarding his actions, which Mello felt may have all been a colossal waste of time, but which Raichi insisted was necessary to ensure that no bugs resided within the Mother Drone's system. "This is technically a developing, self-aware entity, after all; there's no telling if or when it will decide that it is superior to its creators and blow up everything else on the planet, Saiyan and Tuffle alike, and even mentioning the possibility in its presence might sway it on that matter so stop talking about it please your majesty."

Regardless, they decided that they needed Mother One out of the bodies of the two Saiyans if they were to interrogate them properly. Mother One, in response, explained that it had access to both of their memories, and would be a much better choice if they wanted the truth from him.

"Additionally, Doctor Raichi," it continued in Vegeta's voice, albeit a monotonal variant of such, "I have discovered a piece of information that you and King Mello will find interesting."

"Will, or may?"

"Judging by your recent thought patterns, there is a chance higher than 90% that you will find the information interesting."

"...well, then, tell us."

"The information is as follows: the reason the Saiyans so readily followed Vegeta in their fight against the Tuffle race is that, exceptional power level aside, he appealed to their desire to live in less primitive environments than they possessed at the time."

"Wait, wait," Mello interrupted, "so what you're saying is that this whole war has been over... _housing_ rights?"

"A partially correct statement. The living environments of the Saiyan race in general have a tendency to be poor by their nature: a lack of hygiene, semi-tribal rules and regulations, typically patriarchal structure, an inefficient and not always wholly accurate system of classes, and, as implied by your statement, primitive housing."

"So... if we gave them what they wanted, might that end the war? I mean, we can easily provide the resources for new houses to be built for them..."

"There is a significant probability that Vegeta would be willing to discuss a treaty along the lines of what you have suggested."

Mello and Raichi looked at one another for a moment, then back to the possessed Saiyans.

"What are we waiting for?"

* * *

><p>Vegeta and Nappa entered the throne room of the Tuffle's ruler, Mother One moving in behind them to make sure that, post de-possession, they didn't try to do anything potentially lethal to anyone. It was obvious that they were never intended to come in here - Nappa had barely been able to fit through the corridors of the building, and even this main room was only slightly taller than what would be considered an ordinary room by them. On the plus side, they loomed over literally everyone else around them, even given Vegeta's less than immense height of just under six feet. At the center of the room, two modified tables had been moved in to accommodate seating for the Saiyans, and King Mello himself sat at a separate table opposite these, with Dr. Raichi standing to the left of the setup. The Saiyans sat on their makeshift chairs, and Vegeta immediately asked "So why are we here? Clearly, you have something special in mind."<p>

"Well, Vegeta," the Tuffle king began, "you're here because the Tuffle race is rather sick and tired of having to fight the Saiyans constantly."

"We're not tired of fighting you, short stuff-" Nappa began, but was cut off by a swift elbow to the arm from Vegeta.

"Have some courtesy. We are in the presence of a _king_, after all," he stated, deliberately emphasizing the word to highlight his distaste for the monarch.

"Thank you. Now, I understand that this war has been going on for ten years, and under prior circumstances, we may have continued our fight for another hundred. However, things evidently changed. For one, you and yours all transformed into giant apes-"

"Monkeys, technically."

"-and then attempted to destroy our cities, but ultimately failed. Immediately afterwards, you two personally paid witness to the strength of our newest superweapon, the Mother Drones, each of which is already ten times stronger than you are now, and will continue to grow in strength for a while yet."

Nappa didn't remember the initial attack as anything other than a blur of something entering his body through his various orifices and injuries; Vegeta, on the other hand, remembered all too clearly the fear he had experienced upon realising that his subordinate-turned-temporary-foe was suddenly far stronger than him for no apparent reason, and instinctively knew that he never wanted to encounter such a terrifying event again.

"So it's an ultimatum, then. I surrender, or you sic your parents on us and destroy the Saiyans through the power of bad cooking or whatever."

"Aha... no, not quite. Certainly, we could destroy your race with the Mother Drones, as you intended to destroy ours with your, uh, giant monkey forms... but I find that one of my better traits is a willingness to forgive and forget."

"How pathetic."

"You'd think that, but in a civilised society, it's very good for making friends and allies."

"In case you haven't noticed, my people are anything _but_ civilised."

"And therein lies the problem, from what I hear. This whole war has been going on, based on what information I've received, because you and your people don't want to live in the badlands any more."

"...I didn't tell you that, did I?"

"In a sense, you did. Drone possession, and so on, but let's not get into semantics. The point is, we know why you want us dead... and we're willing to compromise, in a way that results in no further bloodshed on the part of either of our races."

"...and why would I agree to such a thing?"

"Because in our ultimatum, either you sign a mutually beneficial treaty that ends the Saiyan-Tuffle war for good, and allows the two races to co-exist peacefully alongside one another, or we have the Mother Drones subjugate your species and put them to work in less than preferable occupations."

"Pfeh. Like you didn't do that before the war."

"...we didn't, as far as I was aware."

"Then clearly, you've been misinformed. See, your people would occasionally kidnap Saiyan children and have them work as slaves in one occupation or another, and because they'd grown into the position, they'd not think there was anything wrong with that."

"Yeah, I didn't realise that I was being gipped until Vegeta here saved me from that one place in that one city," Nappa chimed in. "And I'm very grateful to him for that."

"...I see." Mello continued. "That will have to be included as part of the treaty, then. Assuming you wish to sign such a thing...?"

"I don't see that we have a choice," Nappa stated. "I mean, it's either boring peace or boring slavery, and I've had more than my fair share of slavery, let me tell you."

"Not technically slavery. You'd all be paid for your work, see... you'd just not be allowed to do anything else."

"It doesn't really matter," Vegeta stated. "Either way, we get the short end of the stick. So..."

The Saiyan leader stood from his seat, resulting in Mother One aiming a hand at Vegeta in preparation to destroy him if he did anything stupid. Such was not on his mind, however.

"...so, the way I see it, a treaty would be the best way to make sure the Saiyans receive as much stick as possible."

Mello smiled, one that surprisingly held genuine warmth to it.

"Then let's begin with the deliberations."

* * *

><p><em>So. First Dragonball Z fic I've made. Here's hoping I can write this well; I'm pretty sure I can, people tell me I'm a good writer. For reference's sake, we aren't going to spend a lot of time on Mello and Raichi beyond the prologue; this ain't their story. That being said, it isn't necessarily going to be the story of the Z Fighters either... so yes, fair warning: OCs abound. Not bad ones, I hope, though we can't tell until they actually show up. Also, spot the naming schemes, and feel free to ask questions.<em>


	2. Prologue B - And So On

**Prologue B - And So On**

The production of the treaty went swiftly. The basic terms could be roughly described as "both races should treat one another graciously, and both will have a fair say in how any given political situation turns out". To that end, Vegeta was crowned "King of all Saiyans" by his people, to rule alongside the Tuffle king as his equal; King Mello, meanwhile, set up a more democratic ruling structure, which, whilst it still had the two royals at its head to determine the final ruling on a given topic, included a great number of extra people as well to give their opinions, primarily Tuffles, though with a couple of sufficiently intelligent Saiyans included as well. Mello, when questioned by Vegeta on this imbalance, noted that most Saiyans would have precisely no interest in a political career, and in any case, it was a roughly proportionate representation, given that the Saiyan race consisted of only a few thousand members at any given time, the highest number in recent memory being around ten thousand or so to the millions of potential Tuffle representatives. At the same time, Dr. Raichi redesigned Hatchiyack slightly, so that, whilst it still generated ki from hatred, now did so equally across a majority of subjects of hatred, and also generated it from other emotions like love and happiness; the latter decision was universally agreed to be a good idea, given that the greater the range of emotions covered, the more ki Hatchiyack could generate over time. The Mother Drones also reached maturity quite quickly, their ki totals eventually capping off at around 500000, and thus cementing their status as the keepers of Planet Plant - guardians and guardsmen both, depending on how one behaved.

Interestingly enough, the outcome of planetary annexation by the galactic overlord known as Frieza happened in this universe in a somewhat similar manner to how it did in the setting you all know and love - the Saiyans, being barred from attacking the Tuffles, and generally receiving brief "visits" from the Mother Drones if they did, found themselves fighting one another far more readily than they might be comfortable with under normal circumstances, and for reasons that might be considered less than rational. To that end, the democratic council ruled for the production of a number of locations around the planet where honour duels could be enacted - if one Saiyan felt that another had soiled their pride, the two could battle out their differences in an arena, with a variety of win conditions from "first blood" all the way up to "last Saiyan alive". That being said, the building of these arenas would still take some time; thus, it was suggested that the two races collaborate on an inter-planetary ship, that they might meet up with other races in the meantime (and, if those races happened to bear ill will, let loose the Saiyans upon them). A suitable ship was developed, and a number of representatives travelled to different planets, including one known as Arcose, home of the mercantile Arcosians. At some point during the exploration of the planet and diplomatic discussion with the locals, the party found itself accosted by Frieza himself; curious as to their origin, the alien ruler travelled to Plant, anticipating another easy takeover... only to encounter unexpected resistance.

* * *

><p>"Well, isn't this a grand welcoming party."<p>

Standing before the tyrant and his contingent, at the far edge of one of the cities on the planet, were three blue... things. They stood upright like Frieza himself would if he were not currently seated, but were only just taller than he... and, for that matter, a number of the weaker hostages he'd taken. He'd really wanted to kill them all, to be frank, but if they might have lead him to another planet to conquer - which they of course had - then he had no choice but to let them live, at least until they got to the planet. With that in mind, he'd decided to kill the hostages as soon as he encountered similar entities here, to show them how outmatched they were by comparison, and then to get himself brought to whoever was in charge on this rock... and yet these beings were nothing like those he had captured. Perhaps they were a leader caste of some form, or another species entirely? He didn't know. And what he didn't know had a tendency of making itself known to him, or else it didn't survive the next few hours.

"So, what exactly are you, you... blue creatures?"

"We are the Mother Drones," they replied in unison. "Two, Three, and Four."

"Oh, how adorable, you've named yourselves like some sort of team. Funny story about that: I happen to have my own team. And it's a lot bigger than yours. Open fire, men."

The Mother Drones were immediately plastered with haphazard ki blasts, both naturally-formed and technologically-derived, as the small army behind Frieza fired just about everything they had at the three beings who would dare to stand between the almighty Lord Frieza and his goal, and never mind that they hadn't yet posed any real threat. This continued for upwards of ten seconds, before the alien leader finally gave the signal to cease fire. For a long while, smoke obscured the area that the beings had previously stood in, though it was a practical certainty in Frieza's mind that they had been utterly decimated for their foolhardiness.

Then the Mother Drones began firing back.

From Frieza's perspective, the shots fired were almost pathetically slow. From the perspective of his rank-and-file, such an assault was terrifying to behold: three at a time, the minions of Frieza were vaporised, seemingly without any chance to dodge. Some attempted to fire back, and were destroyed for their trouble; many more attempted to escape, and were either trampled underfoot by their own comrades, or eliminated as they separated from the main pack, until finally, only Frieza himself was left. His eye twitched slightly in response.

"So let's put into perspective what you've just done. You've destroyed my army, many of which were the pilots needed to fly the ship behind me out of here, and effectively left me, the emperor of the entire galaxy, stranded on some backwater planet whose inhabitants have next to no experience on how to develop a good space craft."

One of the drones, apparently unheeding of Frieza's statement, rapidly cut a hole into the side of the ship from a distance, which fell away to reveal the Saiyan and Tuffle hostages previously taken; the same drone travelled over to them, gathered them all in a field of energy, and flew back towards the city.

"And any hope I had left of piloting that craft myself is destroyed by the hull breach that has just been created by your companion. So, naturally, I'm going to destroy all of you in retaliation."

Apparently, "all" in this case referred to the population of the entire planet, as the overlord lifted a finger, allowing a huge sphere of orange-yellow ki to begin ballooning out to incredible proportions above his head, like a K-class star in miniature. In response, the remaining Mother Drones began gathering their own ki to counter the attack, forming a gigantic wall of blue-green energy to catch the planet buster, and hopefully detonate it away from Plant's surface. Shortly, with a maniacal cackle, the overlord tilted his finger forward, launching the ki sphere directly at the energy field formed by his opponents, as if to say "there's nothing you can do to stop me, and I'll take great pleasure in vaporising you first". The attack collided with the defense...

And, to Frieza's great shock, _stopped moving forward._

"What... what is this?" he asked himself. "This has to be a trick!"

But no. Just as Vegeta had found his team's attacks stopped by the barriers around the Tuffle cities, so Frieza now found himself faced with an apparently impossible situation: whatever these blue creatures were, they had halted his attack, almost handily. It was unthinkable! It couldn't be!

He wouldn't allow it. With a furious cry, the overlord propelled himself and his chair backwards and up, and launched a smaller ki blast at the giant energy sphere, destabilising it and forcing it to explode then and there. Surely, he reasoned, the energy released will vaporise these fools once and for all, and I can get to punishing the planet's inhabitants for daring to create such things. Alas, it was not to be: the energy from the explosion was redirected upwards and away from the planet by the fields, sending the excess ki off into space to dissipate harmlessly.

Enough was enough, in Frieza's mind. If they thought they were dealing with one of his strongest attacks that easily, they had another think coming.

* * *

><p>"Your majesties! Some form of intruder- ACK!"<p>

The Tuffle guard's torso was torn out from between his extremities by the sudden burst of ki; what remained fell to the ground, just in time to be buried as the doorway of the Tuffle palace's throne room - doubling as the meeting hall for the democratic council since the Saiyan-Tuffle war - collapsed, to let through Frieza's second form, a gigantic, monstrous, horned, _furious_ visage, holding the two halves of one of the Mother Drones in each hand. Naturally, the Tuffle king was terrified by the intrusion, given that a being which could defeat a Mother Drone was not to be toyed with; King Vegeta, showing no such restraint, immediately launched an attack against the intruder, only to be caught by the arm, which immediately shattered under the force of Frieza's grip. His scream of agony was nearly inhuman in its nature, and immediately stopped any ideas of an offensive he had against the giant.

"WHO MADE THIS." Frieza asked, holding up the half of the Mother Drone that he still held in his hand.

"Uuuugh... th-the Tuffles-"

Satisfied with the answer, Frieza threw the Saiyan King through another wall, knocking him unconscious immediately, dropped the other half of the drone, and strolled- stomped, rather- over to the cowering King Mello, grabbing his shirt lapel with two giant fingers and lifting him far from the ground, to the level of his own head.

"SO," Frieza began with a yell, "YOU ENJOY CREATING BEINGS THAT ATTEMPT TO SUBORDINATE THE EMPEROR OF THE ENTIRE GALAXY, THE ENTIRE _UNIVERSE_, IS THAT RIGHT?!"

"Uuuuhh..." Mello replied shakily, his bladder already threatening to soil his trousers under the effects of such a fear-inducing being. "N-no sir, not me p-per-p-pers- per- uh-"

"THEN WHO MADE THEM?"

"Th-there's a lab be- buh- b-below us..."

A field of energy surrounded the two of them, and the tyrant promptly rushed downward, smashing through the concrete floors like paper, and splattering any unfortunate that stood in the way of such a path of destruction across the nearest walls, until he finally burrowed through several layers of foundation and broke into the metallic corridor that signified the entranceway to the laboratory rooms. From there, he went from room to room, systematically slaughtering the best and brightest of the Tuffle race before their king's eyes, saving the biggest prize for last: the room containing the supercomputer Hatchiyack. The reinforced, code-locked door was torn to pieces by the power of Frieza's mind alone, showering the workers within with debris; the majority of them were quickly blasted to pieces with telekinesis or ki blasts, leaving behind only the supercomputer, the inventor of the device, and the Mother One Drone, which had been reactivated mere moments before in anticipation of the tyrant's noisy arrival. The drone, which had shielded Raichi from the worst of Frieza's attempt to kill him alongside every other scientist, began firing ki blasts at Frieza, but was rapidly cut off by a much larger blast that enveloped its form for a moment, before apparently liquifying it, leaving behind a blueish puddle, and the form of Dr. Raichi behind that.

With a grim smirk, Frieza dropped the Tuffle king to the ground with a _thud_, then began a slow walk towards the scientist who he knew had to be the ultimate cause of all the trouble he had faced so far. He'd enact a personal vengeance against he who would dare to try and kill a god such as himself, and then he'd annihilate the planet that contained such an upstart, to make sure nothing that strong ever split off from the planet's surface ever again.

Because much as he hated to admit it to himself, Frieza was shaken by the fact that he'd faced off against beings nearly as strong as himself, albeit him in his weakest form. Worse: beings, _plural._ One was bad enough, one might just be a fluke, one could be easily dealt with as an example; two was a nightmare waiting to happen, two could (and evidently had) become four, then six, then a thousand... no, he couldn't risk it. The planet had to go.

As he neared Raichi, one of his feet landed in the puddle that had formed after the drone had seemingly been destroyed.

The puddle struck instantaneously. Fast as lightning, it climbed Frieza's body, up his leg, then his torso, and even as the overlord attempted to drag it off of his body, it reached his face and began to clamber into his mouth and nose and eye sockets, and quite suddenly the entire area went to hell.

Mother One, the drone that had attempted to infect Frieza, was thrown away from the alien and into one of Hatchiyack's monitors, sending sparks flying from the both of them.

King Mello and Raichi were flung against the walls of the laboratory, held there by the power of Frieza's outburst.

Frieza himself was rendered invisible by the sheer energy being emitted from his form.

Beyond the walls of the supercomputer's room, everything began to disintegrate. First, the main corridor and sub-rooms of the laboratory; then the foundations above these; and finally, the entire palace simply exploded in a flameless shockwave, flinging both living and dead in all directions. Not many survived the initial blast; even fewer survived the landing. (King Vegeta was one of the few who lived through the event, though he landed several hundred meters away on his bad arm, awakening him through sheer force of pain.)

When everything was over, Mello and Raichi slid down the sections of wall that they had been pinned to, exhausted from the effort of withstanding the temporary force they had been subjected to. Nearby, Mother One peeled itself off of the monitor it had landed upon, and reformed into its proper shape (this being similar to its original form prior to full maturity, though with a more extravagant shoulder brace, a thinner head covering, and much darker dark blue segments than before); it wisely held back for the time being. Miraculously, Hatchiyack was still functioning, having apparently survived the destruction of the palace's electrical systems and all of its monitors; Raichi would later inform Mello that this was due to an internal backup power supply implemented upon its creation, partially drawing from its own ki reserves. As for Frieza...

He seemed morbidly calm for someone who had just destroyed an entire building. No more anger was apparent; his expression was all but neutral.

For several moments, nobody said anything. Then:

"I'm going to steal your children."

A pause.

"...I'm sorry?" Mello asked, confused.

"Don't bother apologising," Frieza continued, his voice a flat monotone, all the more terrifying than even his earlier rage for what it implied. "I _was_ just going to blow up your planet, having killed your scientist first to make certain you couldn't produce anything else to counteract my progress, but since his creature just attempted to invade several of my prized orifices, I'm afraid the vendetta is now personal. Your entire planet, its resources, and its people are now the property of the Planet Trade Organisation. And from every living generation - _every_ living generation - of each individual family unit, I will take the first-born child or adult. And I will personally break their minds. And I will reform them into perfectly loyal soldiers. And then I will send them into impossible battle situations, situations where they are almost certain to die. And then, if they live, I will do it again, and again, and again, until they have been destroyed utterly. Such is the forfeit for the insult that has been dealt to me by your creature's actions."

The two Tuffles were speechless, both out of fear and for what Frieza had just informed them he would do. And Mello didn't doubt that someone so cruel wouldn't perform the acts he had just mentioned, either; Raichi, with his lessened context, was not so sure, but was not fool enough to try and argue.

And then Frieza smiled, a chilling, psychotic smirk that finally broke Mello's ability to hold his urine. The smell permeated the room, sharp as the tension that had just been snapped.

"Now, take me to your young ones."

* * *

><p>For the next three decades, the inhabitants of Planet Plant - now Frieza Planet 387 - lived under the rule of the tyrant overlord. By Frieza's command, Raichi lowered the maximum power of the Mother Drones - reduced in number to three at this point, as Four had been destroyed utterly by Frieza during their battle - to 200000 units, so that they would never pose a threat to Him again, though He did order the creation of many more Mother Drones of similar strength to act as elite troops for the Planet Trade Organisation. As promised, every generation of both Saiyan and Tuffle families had their first born children stolen from them, to become soldiers in Frieza's army. The two royals and their partners were afforded a bit more lenience, since both of the kings were first-borns themselves; however, Frieza insisted that they both have as many children as possible with their respective queens, who would all be confiscated as soon as they were of an appropriate age. With no other choice, Kings Vegeta and Mello complied - Prince Vegeta was born in Age 732, then taken away five years later; Princess Cheri was born and removed from her family a year behind Prince Vegeta, and Prince Tacho came into being halfway through the second decade of Frieza's rule, being confiscated at the relevant age as well. Prince Tarble was born in Age 734, but demonstrated no real talent for combat or desire to fight; with the understanding that he would be inducted into Frieza's army and almost assuredly destroyed by the training before he ever reached the battlefield, alongside a typically Saiyan view of such a weak son being unworthy of rulership of any sort, King Vegeta had him sent to the planet of Tech-Tech mere days before Frieza came to steal away their other child, ensuring that the overlord would never find out about the younger Saiyan prince's existence. At around the same time as these two events, rumours began to spread that a strange cat-like being, even more powerful than Frieza himself, had come to dine with the Saiyan and Tuffle monarchs, which eventually spiralled into claims that some form of Death God had come to judge their planet in some way, and found it worthy of continued survival. But of course, those were only rumours...<p>

* * *

><p>In the Age 762, more than thirty years after their initial annexation, it came to pass that the tyrant Frieza was dethroned by none other than a Super Saiyan in the final moments of planet Namek; the Saiyan's name was unknown, and both he and Frieza were ultimately presumed to be destroyed alongside the planet itself. The news spread quickly, and upon finding out that their overlord had been defeated - by the Super Saiyan of legend, no less - the inhabitants of Plant rejoiced, Saiyan and Tuffle alike. As it so happened, the two species' had become more and more friendly with one another over the years, partially due to simple proximity, and partially as a coping mechanism; with the overlord's fall, the last major taboo between the two races was broken.<p>

A few months later, the first ever Neo-Saiyan was born.

They were not referred to as "Neo-Saiyans" at first, of course, for the name had not been suggested yet, as it would be by the Neo-Saiyans themselves at some point in the future; rather, they were "Saiyan-Tuffle hybrids" in the first instances of their existence. Typically, a Neo-Saiyan possessed combinations of traits from both species - where full-blooded Saiyans almost always held black hair and eyes, and Tuffle hair and eye colour tended to consist of quite bright hues of many sorts, a hybrid of the two species would possess hair of a dark colour, though not greyscale. (At this, it was suggested that King Vegeta and his ilk may be part Tuffle due to his higher-than-average intellect and red-brown hair, though advocators of such were personally silenced by the Saiyan king.) Additionally, a Neo-Saiyan would retain most of the intellect of their Tuffle heritage, but also possess the skill and ki control that came naturally to pure-blooded Saiyans, alongside a roughly averaged height and weight between the two species going by relative age.

Of course, all of these points were moot for around 60% of all Neo-Saiyan newborns, simply due to their not surviving childbirth, or dying shortly afterward. And this wasn't simply a case of suffocation in the womb, as might be expected when the mother was the smaller species, or even simple still birth: the two progenitor species were never meant to reproduce, and though the knowledge was lost to time, it was often suspected that the Saiyans did not even originate from Plant in the first place. As a result, any Neo-Saiyan child might be expected to miscarriage or die within days with, amongst other things, massively deformed born structure, severe muscle deficiency, partially- or wholly-missing internal organs, and, in one particularly notable case, a double-birth where each twin only possessed half a cerebral hemisphere, and a radical, practically experimental surgery was performed that sacrificed the one child to allow the other to live on. Even for the Neo-Saiyans that survived beyond childbirth, there was a marked tendency for them to possess some form of insanity, starting from mild paranoia, and going right up the scale to full-blown gibbering lunacy; additionally, a large proportion of them tended to develop some degree of supremacist complex, considering themselves above both Saiyan and Tuffle, regardless of whether they deserved to do so. For obvious reasons, most of the people of Plant tended to dislike unions that produced such beings once such traits made themselves known; yet even so, it remained possible to encounter in Plantian society, in smaller numbers than even the slowly-growing Saiyan race, monkey-tailed humanoids too large and powerful to be a Tuffle, yet too small and intellectual to be a Saiyan.

* * *

><p>Then, one day, five male Saiyans - two middle-aged adults, a man in his late teens, and two children - quite literally appeared before the current royals (King Vegeta, still serving strongly despite his now somewhat advanced age; and King Tacho, successor to his late father as the eldest surviving child of the Tuffle royal family, hardened by his time in Frieza's forces, but nonetheless a leader to his people). The Saiyan king recognised his eldest son immediately; the other elder Saiyan, when questioned, named himself Son Goku, also known as Kakarot, son of Bardock, and these were his children, Sons Gohan and Goten, and the child of Vegeta, Prince Trunks. Naturally, the royals called for the guards to arrest the intruders; this course of events stopped almost immediately when, simultaneously, the five transformed into Super Saiyans, and the elder three even went beyond this to a form they called "Super Saiyan Two".<p>

Quite suddenly, all the myths about "the legendary Super Saiyan" went out the window - whilst such a being had existed (and it seemed that they had all fought and destroyed him at some point in the past), any Saiyan with sufficient power, when placed in a situation of desperation and need, could transform into a Super Saiyan, and similarly for Super Saiyan 2. What's more, it appeared to be the case that anyone with Saiyan ancestry could achieve these forms - King Vegeta was disgusted to learn that the three youngest members of this group were only half-Saiyan, having been mothered by a species called "Humans". Even so, he embraced his returned son, and it was announced to the world of Plant that the Super Saiyans existed, and any Saiyan or Neo-Saiyan who worked hard enough could achieve the form (though perhaps wisely, the existence of Super Saiyan 2, and even the various advanced forms of Super Saiyan 1 that the Earth-based group had discovered, were kept under wraps for the time being).

All at once, Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans found a reason not to kill one another in any battles they fought. They began to spar- actually _spar_, as opposed to brawl- to increase their power levels, and many began skyrocketing to a degree far beyond anything previously encountered on Plant, even during Frieza's annexation; in anticipation of these power surges, Raichi, who had developed the technology to transfer his own mind and soul from his comparatively frail mortal body into Hatchiyack's systems, and now interacted with the world via solid-projection hologram, continued to assist development of the planet's technology to account for such immense power, a feat assisted greatly through donated samples of Super Saiyan energy from the original five to empower the Tuffles' weapons and defences, including the Mother Drones, which now numbered in the hundreds, each ultimately holding power levels of more than three times that possessed by the average Super Saiyan.

A new caste system developed amongst the two races to whom it pertained - mostly retaining the previous names of the various Saiyan classes, but now based solely on power, with Third-class Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans holding a comparatively measly 1000 units minimum (and those below being considered as weakling scum in the eyes of their betters, not that they weren't already seen as such in the first place), increasing by factors of ten for each class, up to the Elites with their power levels of at least one million units, and then to the fabled Super-Elites who had achieved the Super Saiyan form, even though this still only consisted of five Saiyans total at first. The terms "Double-Elite" and "Extra-Elite", amongst other things, were also suggested for Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans who hit power levels of at least ten million without achieving Super Saiyan, but they were initially discarded on the grounds that one was more likely to achieved Super Saiyan before hitting that level of base power.

At long last, one of the Elites struck gold, and became only the sixth living Super Saiyan of the modern age. A few more followed closely behind, and then quite a lot more, and then the number of Super Saiyans quickly hit the hundreds, escalating ever upward, until the number stabilised at around 750 Super-Elites at a time, the newer Super Saiyans replacing those who died in honour duels with others of the Super-Elite of Plant, or who were culled by a patrolling Mother Drone because their poor anger control in Super Saiyan form led them to murder an innocent bystander or several hundred, intentionally or otherwise. These beings, as the rest of the populace of both planet and universe soon found out, were so far beyond even the few Double-Elites in existence that it was practically unfair: no number of lesser entities could deal with a Super-Elite if they decided to go on a rampage, unless they so happened to be equipped with SS-level weaponry and armour, and even then success was far less than guaranteed given the Super Saiyans' ungodly speed and power.

Which brings us to where this story truly begins: an unstable political situation, in which the lower classes of Plant, and to an extent the other inhabitants of the universe, are perilously imbalanced against the few Super Saiyans and Super Neo-Saiyans, who in turn are only held in check by biomechanical superweapons that, under the right impetus, could be used to take over practically everything in the universe. Perhaps ironically, this story will begin with two of the aforementioned Super-Elites; and, less ironically, with the battle they are about to partake in...

* * *

><p><em>To the few viewers that I've had for this story thus far: hello, welcome, and thank you. Yes, chapter 2 (or, uh, Prologue B) is out already. Now with 50% more worldbuilding, badum tshh. But on a serious note, I'm probably going to churn out a few chapters in the next week or so, since I have the week off from college and nothing better to do with my time; after that, I'll try to aim for a more regular schedule, most likely submitting chapters at the weekends, or more often if opportunities present themselves, or less often if something prevents me from writing or posting chapters. In any case, we already have a review for chapter 1! Thanks to Captain Space, writer of the DBZ fanfics Break Through the Limit and Best Served Cold, for both the review and for helping me out with a few points in the pre-development stages; check him out, if you haven't already.<em>


	3. 1 - But Not Quite Yet

**Chapter 1 - But Not Quite Yet**

"Alright, five minute recess, and then we'll go on to the last battle of the day."

As the cleaners moved in to remove the mess left over from the previous battle of First-class Saiyans, the two Saiyans in the top box of the colosseum-esque structure moved to a private compartment just off of the main viewing zone, cloaked in red velvet, and hidden away from prying eyes. The shorter of the two, the Prince of all Saiyans in his royal armour, immediately began practice of a few basic sparring techniques; the other, possessed of rather messy hair and a somewhat lesser brand of armour, sank into one of the two chairs in the room and pressed his fingers to his forehead, as though nursing a headache.

"What's the matter, Kakarot? I thought you enjoyed watching these fights."

"I enjoy _participating_ in fights, Vegeta. Judging them is just kind of repetitive, y'know? Besides, I'm bored and hungry. Why do I have to be here?"

"For... we've discussed this before, Goku," Vegeta stated, taking the other chair next to his friend of many years, and rival of many more. "We're here because you're the most powerful pure-blooded Saiyan alive, and I am the Prince of our race. In my case, I have an obligation to be here, since I'm going to be running Plant full-time one day; in yours, it's polite to at least take an interest in your home planet's politics, and since this is the simplest part of them-"

"First of all, I'm not an idiot. _If_ I had any interest in politics, I'm sure I'd do at least okay in them. Second, I consider Earth my home planet, as you know."

"Yet born there you were not, and in the eyes of everyone living _here_, you're not an Earthling by any stretch of the imagination."

Goku shook his head and sighed. Even years after his redemption, the younger of the two Vegetas still possessed a determined- some might even say stubborn- streak as hard as steel, which wasn't helped by the fact that he spent so much of his time nowadays on Plant, organising the affairs of his naturally-brutal race and their neighbours. Bulma complained about it quite a bit, said the Saiyan Prince had a teenage son and a young daughter to look after on Earth; yet, whilst he did spend time with them, her requests for additional attentiveness toward the children went generally unheeded. Goku, for his part, did wonder whether Vegeta didn't deliberately stay on Plant for longer than he strictly needed to at any given time - he could go back and forth between them when he liked, thanks to a combination of a communication signal developed by Vegeta, composed of specific ki fluctuations designed to catch the attention of those ki sensers who weren't already looking out for such a thing, and Goku's Instant Transmission technique, allowing him to zip back and forth between Earth and Plant practically at will; yet frequently, the Prince chose to spend his nights on the latter planet, even when Goku saw no good reason why. It occurred to the younger Saiyan that Vegeta and Bulma's relationship could well be on its last legs just for distance and devotion to work on the part of the former, and if it was, when the metaphorical train would finally come to a stop. And on the note of family...

"Either way, I do have a family on Earth, who I promised to spend more time with, yet you've had me here with you every day for the past two weeks. I'm sure you said I only needed to come along every two or three days..."

"Let me put it this way, Kakarot: with a backlog of days that you've been here built up, you don't need to come along to the honour duels so often, meaning that you can spend more days on Earth, and ultimately, more time with your family."

"I'm sure it's the same amount of time regardless of how the days are arranged."

"You should be glad you even get days off, Kakarot! If I take unscheduled days off, I get reprimanded by my father, and ultimately disowned with regards to rulership, meaning the next in line is my brother, and suddenly Saiyan society collapses as its new ruler begins implementing... I don't know, flowers for orphans or something. I don't know what he thinks Saiyan society should be like."

"Then how do you know he wouldn't be good at ruling the Saiyans?"

"It doesn't matter. _I'll_ be the next ruler, even if it kills me."

"...yeesh. When you put it like that, it makes me glad I'm not in your shoes."

"_If_, Kakarot. Regardless, you're lucky to have the extra time, and especially lucky to even have the privilege of being here. Three Super Saiyan 2's in existence, and you've managed to surpass even that. You'd be like a... I don't know, Triple-Super-Elite, if we're going by the stupid way the council decided to name the ranking system. Double-Elites, Extra-Elites, it's all just increasing power..."

"You're not still sore about our power levels, are you?"

"No, no, don't worry... even if you outrank me by that scale, I'm still above you in terms of bloodline. And," Vegeta finished with a smirk and a drawn-out syllable, "I still have more _priiide_ than you." This elicited a chuckle from Goku. "Heh, I remember those days... man, those were some great times we had, huh."

"Not so much worrying about the royal lineage back then, at any rate... alright, come on, five minutes is nearly up."

A moment shared, the two Saiyans stood up and began walking back to the public box.

* * *

><p>The arena was still packed with onlookers, despite the break. There were nearly always people in the seats during the day, even (and, in fact, especially) if there weren't any honour duels scheduled at a given arena around the world, since there were regularly unscheduled fights brought into currently-unused arenas. On this particular day, though, duels had been on since the early morning, to deal with issues ranging from house ownership to a lost arm; as a matter of fact, the term "honour duel" was perhaps a bit of a misnomer, given that the right for one Saiyan or Neo-Saiyan to challenge another to a one-on-one duel was rarely utilised to sate a desire to restore one's honour. Surprisingly, though, it worked quite well as a judicial system: most Saiyans, if they'd lost fair and square (and lived to tell the tale), would accept it as meaning they were in the wrong, and then leave the issue be. The same couldn't necessarily be said of Neo-Saiyans, whose opinions on the arrangement... varied, to say the least.<p>

The final honour duel of the day would be between a Saiyan and a Neo-Saiyan: both Super-Elites, the duel had initially been called because the Neo-Saiyan, in what was reported as being a "fit of rage-drunk insanity", had supposedly killed a number of the Saiyan's young children, which had drawn the wronged party's ire and caused them to call the honour duel upon the Neo-Saiyan before the nearest Mother Drone could kill him off. As a result, his judgement had been postponed for two days whilst the schedule cleared up; in the next few minutes, though, both their fates would be decided.

The two combatants entered the now-spick-and-span arena from opposite ends. At the one end, the Saiyan: otherwise straight black hair clustered in extremely long spikes at the front and back of his head; a long black tail with a kink near the tip flared out behind him; hyper-pale blue eyes (a rarity for Saiyans, whose eyes were nominally wholly black) glared out from behind a single large bang over his face; a blue tank top and darker blue jeans covered a body that was extraordinarily fine for a Saiyan, with ankle-length sneakers and a black, turquoise-trimmed longcoat finishing the picture. At the other end, the Neo-Saiyan: brownish-red hair stopped at his shoulders, relatively ragged in appearance, particularly so with the presence of three wide, upward-facing spikes at the front of his head, and another two at the upper-back corners; a tail of the same colour flailed in a seemingly uncontrolled fashion as he walked; eyes of a sharp crimson stared straight ahead, and, at closer range, seemed to focus, unfocus, and refocus repeatedly over time; a somewhat thinner than average Neo-Saiyan build, said average being a miniature of the typically bulky and muscular Saiyan build, clad itself in traditional Saiyan attire resized for Neo-Saiyans, white armour over one-size-fits-all blue spandex, with additional golden shoulder pads for further decoration and defense.

The parties stopped several meters from one another, the one side now giving a death stare to the other, who completely ignored it in favour of an observation of the pure-blooded Saiyan's mate, a Prince Vegeta look-alike apparently made of pure, lean muscle, and with the wifebeater to show it off. The non-standard clothing of the two (and, incidentally, the non-standard naming that now presented itself in many inhabitants of Plant) was not uncommon in modern Saiyans, on account of the partial integration of Plant's inhabitants with the rest of the universe at large; with that in mind, the Neo-Saiyan's combat suit was not particularly uncommon either, though for what little protection unmodified armour variants gave at the level of the Super-Elite, it may as well have been casual clothing (which, given the sensibilities of many Neo-Saiyans, it might have actually been). Either way, with both groups present, the pre-battle formalities could begin.

"We are gathered at this hour," the Prince of all Saiyans began, repeating the ceremonial lines in an almost bored tone, his voice carried by the technology of the arena to every part of the area, "to witness the honour duel that is about to take place between these two parties. To my right, you see the wronged party, a Saiyan Super-Elite. Please state your name, any relevant titles, and why you have brought us here today."

"Iago, the Sky Blade," the Saiyan stated in a hateful tone. "He killed my children."

"They asked for it," the Neo-Saiyan responded non-chalantly.

"YOU WENT FOR THEM AFTER AN ARGUMENT WITH ME!"

"_You_ asked for it _for_ them."

"Silence!" Vegeta called. "Please do not interrupt the formalities! There'll be plenty of time for namecalling during the battle. Now, to my left, we see the defendant, a Neo-Saiyan Super-Elite. Please state your name, any relevant titles, and any defense you might make regarding your supposed actions."

"Demado, Who Is The Best Person Ever, And Is The Best. And in my defense, my opponent is a hate-mongering sissy bitch homosexual."

"Go fuck yourself!"

"I will do that when you learn to stop being a sissy bitch."

"Grr...!"

"ENOUGH." Vegeta yelled. "Again, insults may be thrown during the battle, and at no other time. We don't have all day."

"But he's a si-"

A quick bolt of ki struck the ground before Demado, silencing him quite readily. The energy shields that surrounded any given honour duel arena to protect the crowds and the overseers would quite readily halt a direct assault from the strongest of Super Saiyans for long enough to force them to power down, which said a lot about Tuffle technology; even more vocal was the fact that they could also be made one-directional, such that a so-inclined ruler-to-be could launch attacks through it without disrupting its defensive properties.

"So. I assume neither party is willing to back down?"

Both shook their heads.

"In that case, would the wronged party please state the conditions of the duel?"

"To the death. Melee and ranged allowed. Melee weapons allowed."

"Does the defendant have any objections?"

"Neeeeeh. The sissy bitch can hide behind as many weapons as he likes, they won't help him in the end."

"Conditions are set, then. Please power up to your preferred level of power."

Both immediately entered appropriate powering-up stances, and waves of force began cascading across the length of the arena, held back by the fields and accompanied by prolonged yells from both participants. The crowds watched in anticipation; Goku and Vegeta looked on, casually gauging the two fighters' power levels via their own ability to sense ki, a big benefit in a place where scouters weren't generally allowed. Finally, Demado hit a wall, and barged through it into the Super Saiyan form with a final scream, followed a split second behind by Iago. The watchers murmured to one another at this - a phenomenon that had been noticed in the honour duels, it was often the case that whoever powered up into Super Saiyan fastest would be the stronger party, something that was reluctantly admitted to by one of the original five Super Saiyans, though the reasons behind it remained unknown to the present day. Even so, a second wasn't much, and quite frequently, a small power gap could be easily overcome by superior tactics. On the other hand, both parties might be obscuring their true strength at first, so as to trick out their opponent into revealing theirs first... it was a game of sorts, one that many fighters played, but few perfected.

Now both fighters possessed a shining golden aura, hair of the same colour on both tails and head that spiked up far more than before on account of the power emanated by each combatant - drawing Iago's longer spikes and facial bang far above his head, and inciting a more even spread of spikes in Demado's case - and the same blue-green eyes that all Super Saiyans shared. Even at this stage, though, they continued to increase their strengths, until they finally settled at levels they found themselves comfortable at at this time - going by their ki sense, Goku and Vegeta found that Demado had stopped slightly above Iago. A confirmed suspicion, perhaps... or, if not, a purposely drawn-out fight to come.

"Both parties, prepare yourselves."

Both sides moved into their respective combat stances, Iago taking a long step back, pushing one hand forward and the opposite fist backward, and Demado simply putting up both fists, and waving them around aggressively.

"And... begin."

* * *

><p><em>Hello again, readers. So yeah, sorry about the tease regarding the upcoming fight; that'll begin at the start of the next chapter, I promise. This chapter is a bit shorter than the previous two, which were primarily exposition about the universe and how it split off from DBZ canon, but for future reference, expect chapters to be around 2000 to 7000 words long, depending on my motivation to write. Meaning "anywhere from shorter than this chapter to significantly longer than Prologue A", if anyone wanted a semi-visual representation of chapter lengths. Anyways, no new reviews for chapter 2, which is perhaps understandable given how this fic has been going so far; if anyone does have any questions, praises, or constructive<em> (constructive_) criticisms_,_ though, please feel free to ask away._


	4. 2 - Death or Glory

_WARNING: Loooots of blood and gore in this chapter. Also, because I know somebody is going to mention this, the statements made by the characters do not in any way represent my own world view or opinions on subjects. That goes for every chapter both before this one and after._

* * *

><p><span><strong>Chapter 2 - Death or Glory<strong>

The battle kicked off almost immediately. To the more casual viewers, the attacks made by the combatants were only able to be traced by the periodic shockwaves that reverberated between the energy shields; to the three other Super-Elites present, including Goku and Vegeta, a relatively sloppy display of combat was shown. Iago had, somehow, obtained a scythe, and was sending a flurry of attacks in the direction of Demado, who was doing what he could to dodge the swipes and try to send attacks of his own past his assailant's long, albeit impractical, defense. Both of them, from what details had been recorded, were relatively young, the Saiyan being 22, and the Neo-Saiyan being 19 (and therefore one of the older Neo-Saiyans in existence); neither of them had spent any time in Frieza's army before he was destroyed, and it showed in their lack of combat skill. That being said, both were showing a great amount of ferocity in the fight, and since the normal viewers didn't have a hope of seeing who was on top at this stage, it still made for a relatively good show.

Eventually, one of them made a mistake: Iago, seeing an opening, wound up for a fraction of a second, then sent a strike diagonally downward towards Demado. However, the Neo-Saiyan, having noticed the slower attack, grabbed for the weapon, found a grip, and hauled it out of its creator's hands, snapping it over one knee; this, however, left him open for a double-footed kick to the face, sending him flying as a streak of gold to the other side of the arena, bouncing off of the energy barrier before righting himself.

"Oh, that was a cheap shot!" Demado called.

"Well, you took your sweet time breaking the scythe!"

"Like I broke that one kid of yours...?"

"Shut up and DIE!" screamed Iago, forming what appeared to be shards of blue-gold ki from his aura, and flinging them in a wide stream towards his opponent, who promptly began twisting around the deadly projectiles, barely avoiding dismemberment several times.

"Cheat!" the Neo-Saiyan cried emphatically, for no good reason other than to piss Iago off. "Hacks! NNNNEEEERRRRR-"

His voice ceased for a split second as the wall of ki blades suddenly became several times more dense, and his form seemingly vanished before they could hit him. Immediately afterward, he reappeared, finishing the word - "-RRRRRRD!" - and grabbing Iago by the head and kneeing him in the temple as hard as he could, cutting off the attack stream and opening up a wound on his opponent. A moment later, Demado dodged backward, barely avoiding a slice from another scythe, which had once again appeared from nowhere. Apparently, that was one of his opponent's tricks. A new melee began, with Iago once again on the offensive; this time, though, Demado responded in kind, deliberately using his hands to redirect the path of many of the blows that would otherwise have been made, and eventually vaulting himself over a downward slash to fling himself at his opponent, forcing him to drop the scythe to defend against the next several punches.

"You suck at this, sissy!" Demado yelled, battering his fists repeatedly against Iago's forearms.

"Go... eat... a dick!" came the response, a powerful kiai once again throwing Demado away, upwards this time, though a kiai in the opposite direction stopped his momentum before he could hit the barrier.

"I bet you eat lots of them, you person! And on that note, how exactly did you have children, anyway? You and your friend are both guys..."

"Why does that matter to _you_, freak?!"

"Whoah, look out guys, we've got someone who thinks she's hot shit over here!"

"WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?!" Iago screamed, launching himself upward at Demado's frame, but finding himself caught by the forearms as the smaller fighter leaned in and grinned maniacally. "Yeraguuuurl, mate," he leered, before flinging his opponent downward and kicking repeatedly at his face, forcing the Saiyan to retreat further towards the ground with his face covered. When he uncovered it, he saw the Neo-Saiyan's relatively small frame silhouetted behind a gathered ball of bright red energy.

"Ha HA! Now you'll face the wraith of my special attack!" Demado cried. "It's all going to kick off for your face now!"

"The hell are you saying?" Iago replied in a confused manner, preparing his own energy beam, a pastel blue edged with the yellow of his Super Saiyan form, to counteract that of his opponent. "Just- stop- talking!"

"No! Now prepare yourself for my EXTREME IMPLOSION BOMB, bitch!"

With that, and one last "HYAAAAH!", Demado flung his attack downward, and Iago, seeing no other choice, fired his attack then and there, emitting a cry of hatred. Finally, in this one last struggle, he could obliterate the killer of his children, and-

The beam tore through the energy ball like it wasn't there. Or rather, like it held only minor substance. The Saiyan cut off the attack, only to find that, after everything had dispersed a second later, Demado simply wasn't there.

"What the-"

"Made you look."

Iago was promptly enveloped in a wide, searing stream of orange-gold energy, fired from behind him by his enemy for the hour. It had been a trick all along - the "Extreme Implosion Bomb" really _was_ insubstantial, or close enough that it made no practical difference to Demado's energy levels; and whilst Iago had been distracted by what he believed to be a major threat, his opponent had snuck behind him, thus leading to the current scene. After several seconds of sustained fire, Demado finished his attack, leaving a large gash in the ground and a slowly-fading dust screen covering the view. Simply for noise, though, it became obvious to Demado that his target hadn't yet been killed; and sure enough, there stood Iago, having reflexively boosted the amount of energy he was accessing in order to survive the foul play made by his opponent.

"Now who's the cheat?" he asked, removing his longcoat and throwing it to one side of the arena for safety.

"You are, for having energy knives or whatever."

"Not my fault I can mould my ki like that and you can't."

"Yes it is! Because I say it is!"

"What logic is that?! Do you try to annoy _all_ of your opponents like this, or am I a special case?"

"Oh, you're definitely 'special', alright..." he stated, apparently not sensing the irony in that statement. Then, after a pause: "Y'know, because you're a massive faggot."

"ENOUGH ABOUT MY SEXUALITY ALREADY!" Iago yelled frustratedly, sending another stream of ki shards towards Demado; this time, the Neo-Saiyan began accessing more of his energy, and then simply flew out of the path of the assault. After a few seconds, Iago gave up on that tactic, and instead decided to go all-out, accessing his full strength in a matter of moments; with nothing to dodge, Demado responded in kind, and the two eventually hit their maximum strength.

_Huh. They're both pretty strong..._ Goku thought to himself, perhaps underestimating the two people compared to himself. _But it seems like Demado's outmatched by a little bit in this case... though I think I'd rather root for Iago, just because he seems less mean._ Goku's sentiment regarding sides was generally shared by most of the Tuffles in the audience, given what they saw as a reprehensible, insane being facing off against someone fighting to instigate appropriately-directed justice; by contrast, the Saiyans of the audience were just glad to see a good fight, and cheered as the two fighters in the arena powered up as far as they could go. Finally, another melee battle began; this time around, Iago definitely held the upper hand, landing several punches on Demado, and eventually forming a pair of sickles to swing at his opponent. The Neo-Saiyan certainly seemed to be outmatched, and one good hit by the weapons his opponent held would almost certainly put him down for good. That being said, he held his own for a good long while, long enough to wear down Iago's patience. With a sudden front flip, the pureblood sent his heel spinning into the halfbreed's skull, throwing Demado to the ground. The sickles reformed themselves into a particularly large scythe, and Iago catapulted himself downward towards Demado, barely failing to strike home, as the Neo-Saiyan caught the blade in both hands just before it buried itself in his skull. Now a battle of pure strength began: with the one pinning the other to the ground through sheer force, whoever could take control over the blade would decide how the battle continued, if they allowed it to continue at all.

* * *

><p><em>So. When are you going to get the knife out?<em>

_Aww, do I have to? I didn't want to show him my stabs just yet, we're having so much fun!_

_You've got a massive scythe aimed at your skull. _Our_ skull, I should say. I think now, if ever, would be a good time to end it._

_Blurghrrhrgh... oh fine jeez. Could I exploit one of his weaknesses first, though? I meant to do that before, but..._

_I assume you mean the badly-set tail bone. Sure, go ahead. It'll probably be fun watching him scream._

* * *

><p>Ever so slowly, Demado edged himself downward, moving further between Iago's legs in an apparent effort to move himself out of the scythe blade's path, and drawing the older fighter's attention and ire.<p>

"Where do you think YOU'RE going, bastard?!" Iago yelled, raising a foot to stamp down on Demado's stomach. This, though, was what Demado had been waiting for; with his opponent imbalanced, he abruptly flung his arms over his head, dragging the scythe, and, in turn, the unprepared and kiai-assisted Iago with them, sending both crashing into the ground, and winding Iago from the impact. His position set, Demado flipped over the scythe blade, smashing his feet into Iago's face and further stunning him, then twisted round, grasped his opponent's tail on either side of the kink, then bent it back on itself as hard as possible.

The snap of bone echoed around the arena. Half a second later, so did Iago's high-pitched screech of absolute pain.

* * *

><p><em>Now?<em>

_Now._

* * *

><p>Finding himself with an effectively incapacitated opponent beneath him, Demado grabbed Iago by the scruff of his shirt, and flung him still-screaming into the air. Almost casually, the Neo-Saiyan followed upward, stopped the Saiyan's flight, then flicked his hand out to form a rough blade of ki around his forearm, bright red in colour, and plunged it into Iago's chest, drawing a gasp from many of them, and cries for blood from the rest. Certainly, the injury drew blood: even if it had only penetrated just above where his ribcage began, Iago was silenced by the shock of it as the puncture began to almost spew the red fluid from itself.<p>

Something seemed off to Goku, though. The blade was... he placed a hand on Vegeta's shoulder, so as to better facilitate telepathic communication.

_Vegeta, the energy in that blade... do you sense how concentrated it is?_

_I do. But how did he do it? He's a Neo-Saiyan, and not an overly focused one at that. Surely he doesn't have that much control over his own ki...  
><em>

_I dunno... maybe we should ask him about it afterwards._

Meanwhile, almost forgetting his broken tail, Iago clasped a hand over the wound, and stared unbelieving at his opponent, who now tossed a ball of orange-red ki in his free hand whilst completely ignoring the other fighter.

"You..." Iago began, not willing to comprehend that he was almost certainly about to die. "You shanked me..."

* * *

><p><em>I'm sick of this prissy fucker. Can I finish him off?<em>

_Must yoouu?_

_I haven't tortured anyone in ages, not the way I want to mutilate birdbrain here. This is the least you could do for me._

_Ohhh... well, when you put it like that, I can't just go against your wishes. Go on, then, and make it a good one._

* * *

><p>"That's wrong." Demado began, turning to Iago once more, his voice no longer the sing-song taunting from before, instead a harsh monotone. The Neo-Saiyan placed his free hand, no longer playing with the ki ball, on his opponent's shoulder, and was it just him, or did Iago see his opponent's eyes almost <em>harden<em> in cruel anticipation?

"The correct phrasing is, I shanked you _repeatedly_."

The shoulder placement became a death grip, and suddenly Demado's knife arm was pumping forward and back repeatedly, sending the energy blade into Iago's body again and again and again, and many of the crowd cheered in exultation at the blood being spilled, and blood poured from Iago's mouth as the surely-lethal injuries began adding up, and just as Iago dropped out of Super Saiyan form, Demado began giggling, first quietly, then more and more loudly, drawing the attention of many of the more focused members of the congregation.

_Hey, Vegeta..._ Goku asked uncertainly. _Is it just me, or... did Demado's ki spike for a moment?_

_I wouldn't say it didn't..._ came the Prince's response.

As the giggle devolved into a full-on homicidal laugh, Demado ceased his repeated stabbing motion, instead opting for a swipe across Iago's throat, sending blood spraying out of his neck, and then another diagonally up his face, disfiguring the unfortunate Saiyan, taking out his eye and his nose. The Neo-Saiyan continued to laugh as he flung his opponent's body towards the ground, then fired a ki blast at it to melt the flesh of Iago's chest, the explosion propelling the body into the floor at high speed; as the blast's area of effect receded, the Neo-Saiyan dropped feet-first into the opened-up chest cavity of his opponent, shattering whatever bones had already evaded damage and crushing most of his remaining vital organs into paste, then fell to his knees in a straddling position and erratically began carving the long-since-deceased Saiyan's upper body into chunks, spraying blood across the ground in an orgy of gore and bone fragments, the deranged laughter continuing all the while, now the main attraction of this grim spectacle.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"

The unfamiliar voice's origin quickly became apparent, as Iago's mate, himself having long since hit his own maximum level of Super Saiyan, charged through the one-way barriers and into the ring, preparing a rather massive attack in order to utterly destroy the man who dared to deface his lover's corpse. Yet even with the threat now forming behind him, Demado continued stabbing his arm and the associated ki knife through the reddish mush that now composed the majority of Iago's form.

* * *

><p><em>He's gonna fiiiiire at uuuuuus... you done yet? Because that's a thing you should do now!<em>

_I have it under control. Remember, the knife extends._

* * *

><p>Unseen by most, if not all of the crowds, the energy blade began extending into the ground, burrowing through as though it weren't there. Unseen, but not unnoticed: Vegeta and Goku both sensed the blade's sudden extension, and whilst Goku began wondering how he got the knife to do that, and whether or not that other guy was starting to go Super Saiyan 2 because he could still sense his energy rising, Vegeta began taking note of their position relative to the two Super-Elites now in the arena, and quickly realised that a line formed between the three of them; that blade just kept getting longer and longer, which meant...<p>

"Move, move, MOVE!" Vegeta cried, pushing Goku to one side and himself in the opposite direction, though his voice went unnoticed by the audience in the heat of the moment.

"Huh?" Goku exclaimed. "What's the big problem?"

At that exact moment, Iago's mate gave a yell, and launched an overcharged, bright white energy beam at the Neo-Saiyan's back; in the same instant, both the yell and the sound of the attack were overpowered by a loud VWOOM, and a momentary wall of red that seemed to pass through the beam itself, a result of Demado's sudden movement.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl, just for a moment. Then, four things split.

First, the beam itself, and the primary target of the blade's motion, separated into two equal halves, now destined to pass to the sides of their intended target and strike the ground several meters behind him.

Second, the launcher of the beam, vertically bisected by the attack. He had held the title "Master of War" for his actions as a soldier of Frieza's army, awarded after the fact by King Vegeta himself; yet now, in his panic, he had foolishly left himself wide open to the single fell swoop that instantly ended his life, his hair returning to black from gold almost instantaneously.

Next, and from here on unintentionally, the field of energy that surrounded the battleground, damaged from just after the apex of the dome right down to where the blade re-entered the ground. A flaw thus revealed: whilst the energy barrier could withstand an assault from a Super Saiyan _over time_, a concentration of energy significantly beyond that level, focused into what was effectively an ultra-fine edge, could quite easily break through; and so it did, causing the otherwise invisible barrier to flicker green for several moments after the knife passed through, then re-establishing its integrity once the weapon's path had long since moved on.

Finally, the arena boundaries themselves, including the stadium, the unfortunate Saiyans and Tuffles who had sat in the path of the blade, and the royal grandstand where Vegeta and Goku had sat, with the blade itself passing through the space where Goku's left shoulder had been not a moment before.

All this before the dirt dragged up by the blade's upswing had returned to the ground.

Time resumed its normal perceived course, and the beam halves exploded as they ran into the earth behind Demado, shrouding him and the two halves of the beam's launcher in dust and the aftershock of energy that resulted. As the chaos of the sudden turn of events subsided, and everyone began to parse what exactly had happened, the sound that made itself known to everybody was a psychotic giggle; its source seemed to be the apparent victor of the prior fight, yet as the dust cleared, the giggle turned into a victorious laugh, then jubilant whoops as Demado, returned to his base form, began to leap around exultantly.

"WHOO! YES! I am the winner! I win! MY win! YES! YUSSSS! Yeah!"

This continued for some time, everyone else silent as they observed the general mess he was in, bloody and apparently insane. Eventually, having given the two corpses a double-bird and a suitably loud "fuck you" each, the noise the Neo-Saiyan made lowered itself to nothing, and he turned to face the Prince of Saiyans in the halved royal box. One of the Saiyans, in one half of the stand, was just picking himself up and brushing himself down; the other, clad in royal armour, simply glared at the Neo-Saiyan who had dared to perform such a potentially regicidal act.

"So, mister big boss," Demado began, back to a sing-song voice, "how many points do I get for the double kill?"

"You nearly injured myself and my associate," came Vegeta's response, the conversation still being bounced around the arena, despite the wiring that had been damaged by the blade.

"...oh. Really?"

"Yes, really. That's grounds for execution, you know."

"...you serious bro."

Without another word, the Saiyan Prince began charging an energy beam at the ends of two of his fingers, quite ready to blast the Neo-Saiyan into oblivion, but a hand on his arm stopped him just before he made the attack a reality.

"Can I talk to you for a second before you do that, Prince Vegeta?"

The overly formal manner of Goku's voice didn't turn Vegeta's head - they'd agreed that he'd be referred to in such a tone by the younger Saiyan in public, if only because there would otherwise be problems with formality amongst others toward the Prince. Even so, the audacity of Goku's request caused Vegeta's eye to twitch ever so slightly. For several moments, nothing happened; then, ceding to the suggestion, Vegeta allowed his attack to dissipate, and walked to the back of the public stand with Goku, away from the voice-reflecting technology's reach into it.

"What is it, Kakarot?" Vegeta asked in a whisper, annoyed beyond belief.

"Well, it's just that I don't think he meant to hit either of us with the energy blade. Also, I thought you weren't evil any more?"

"It's not that I'm doing it for fun, but I _have_ to execute him now. He assaulted a royal grandstand, and failed to utilise formal speech in deference to a royal Saiyan; if I allow him to live, what's stopping others from trying the same thing? It won't do, he's got to go."

"But Vegeta-" Goku began, pleading.

"He's insane beyond belief anyway, Kakarot!" Vegeta continued, the annoyance now creeping into his tone. "Why the hell do you want him alive so much?!"

"I just think it's unfair that we should decide who lives and who dies so readily. I mean, I could've let Krillin kill you after our first battle..."

"Okay, no, there's no way you can be mistaking evil for _batshit insane_."

"I didn't say that! I'm just saying, you got redeemed, and there are places on Earth and on Plant where insanity can be treated, so..."

Vegeta simply made motions with his mouth at this point, unwilling to point out the severe flaw in Goku's logic regarding how the different species responded to psychiatric treatment - in the case of most known Neo-Saiyans, not at all positively.

"Look, what I suggest is that we ask him to apologise for nearly injuring you, and to promise not to do it again. Then, if he doesn't do that, we can exile him."

"Exile a Super Saiyan _where_, exactly? Where can we exile him?"

"Well, Earth."

"No-"

"It's the safest place!" Goku empathically stated. "There's at least one Super Saiyan 2 there at all times, in the form of Gohan, who can go Mystic as well just in case, and then we've got Goten and Trunks there too, who are almost certainly more powerful than this guy, and they can fuse and become a Super Saiyan 3, so there's no problem! If he tries to do anything, any of them could stop him for good, but we should give him a chance when he hasn't done anything deliberate towards us."

"He just killed two people, and gleefully mutilated one of their corpses."

"I don't know that that was him, either..." Goku noted seriously. "I've never felt anything like it, his ki just went back to full like he'd never expended any, _and_ his demeanour changed completely. Never mind the energy blade he formed... something's up with all of that, and I'm curious to find out what."

"..."

"Come on. You can't tell me you're not curious either."

"...if- _if_- I allow him to live. _If_ I allow him to live, then you never ask me to spare one of _my_ subjects ever again."

"You know I can't promise that, Vegeta..."

"Five seconds, Kakarot." Vegeta finished, holding up the same two fingers from before, and beginning to charge energy in them once again. The implication was obvious, and the choice was made after three seconds. "Fine, have your way about it," Goku relented, "but I'll do my best to change your mind later on." With a compromise reached, Vegeta again allowed the energy at his fingers to fade, and strode back to the balcony of the destroyed grandstand, where he observed Demado wandering around, apparently blowing at a stray molecule of dust in the air. He coughed to draw the Neo-Saiyan's attention, then again with greater force when the first failed to catch his ear. Demado turned and waved, apparently oblivious to how thin the line he stood upon was.

"Well, Demado, it seems you are the single luckiest being in the universe." Vegeta began. "At the request of my associate Kakarot, you have been granted a reprieve of sorts. You now have two options. The first option is exile. You will be taken to a far-off planet, and then left there without a way to return to Plant; indeed, if you are ever seen on Plant again without fulfilling the conditions required of you by the exile, you will be executed on the spot."

"Boo."

"On the other hand..."

Vegeta really didn't want to say this next bit. The Neo-Saiyan would exploit it to get away with attempted regicide, he just knew it.

"...you may also choose to apologise, in a formal speech, for the actions you have perpetrated toward me this day. Make a choice."

For several moments, nobody said a word.

"...but I don't want to apologise." Demado said. "I don't need to apologise for anything, because I was the one who won the fight, and then the other guy tried to kill me, and then I killed him first in self-defense, and nothing hit you so you're fine, and then you're trying to get me to do stuff for being in the wrong when I'm not-"

Vegeta just stared as Demado's voice became increasingly frantic and whiny. If he wasn't looking at a technical adult, he'd swear the Neo-Saiyan was about to have a temper tantrum.

"-and then I don't get anything for being the winner because you say so, and now you're just being a DUMB STUPID IDIOT, AND THAT ISN'T FAIR ON ME, AND YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO RULE THE HONOUR DUEL PROPERLY, AND FURTHERMORE YOU'RE JUST BEING A JACKASS FOR THIS, AND-"

* * *

><p>"And that's why he's here now," said Goku, as he finished retelling the story to his friends at Kame House. The inhabitants of the small island the building was located on were alternately staring at Goku, wondering if everything he'd said was real, and at the Neo-Saiyan sulking in the corner, as if to reconfirm the truth behind the tale.<p>

"...uh huuuh," Krillin finally murmured. "Aaaand you think bringing him to live with us is a good idea..."

"Because there's always a Super Saiyan more powerful than him within flying distance."

"...and within prevention-of-violent-murder distance?"

"Oh, don't worry about that." Demado suddenly stated, drawing everyone's attention. "I promise that I'll be a good member of this planet's society for as long as necessary, even if it means repressing my usual instincts."

"Uh. That was... formal."

"Well, Kakarot- can I call you Goku?" Demado asked as he turned to face the group, a certain determined hardness in his eyes. "Maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself right now, and sincerely want to change myself for the better whilst on this planet."

"You had a temper tantrum when asked to apologise earlier..." Goku pointed out.

"...it didn't seem that bad from my perspective. And in any case, I'll be sure I find a way to apologise sincerely as soon as I can."

"...weeell, if you say so. Anyways, I've gotta get home now. Chi-Chi's cooking dinosaur tonight!"

"Oh, uh, could I come along? Saiyan appetite, and all."

"Kame House does have a good supply of food, but... eh... I don't see why not," Goku said with a shrug. Grinning, Demado went and took Goku's arm with his hand; the Saiyan's other hand went to his forehead, and the two beings suddenly disappeared - followed shortly after by a sigh of relief from everyone else in the house. Even with an eerily calm promise of goodwill, they just didn't feel all that safe around him... from what they'd heard, many Neo-Saiyans were mercurial in their temperament, and they didn't want to be around when that temperament changed to "destroy everything".

* * *

><p><em>Those were some ballsy to the wallsy lies you were telling.<em>

_What else was I supposed to do? If you'd just let me do the talking back on Plant, we wouldn't be in this situation now._

_Yeah, but he totally insulted me by giving me options I didn't like!_

_And look where complaining about those got you. Now, if you want to do well on this planet- or for that matter, escape the clutches of the almighty idiot and the vindictive ruler- then I suggest you let me do most of the talking whilst we're here. Agreed?_

_Eeeeeeerrrrhhh-_

_Don't whine, please. You know it makes the headspace unbearable._

_You like me really, I know you do. You couldn't life without my cuh-raaazy antics._

_...I couldn't "life"?_

_Well, yeah, you know... like "live"?_

_Then just say "live"._

_Only if you admit to the thing I said._

_...sure. You're the only one I trust to be truthful with me, I suppose, so..._

_D'awwwww. Thanks, sis._

_You're welcome, brother._

* * *

><p><em>Cliffhanger no jutsu. #obligatory terrible-ninja-show-related pun<em>

_But seriously, the next chapter is this one, and it is here in good time once more. Enjoy it, comment on it, and once again, character opinions are not my opinions. Anyways, another review has been made, this one by bobamon:  
><em>

**Very interesting premise, I've seen it done before but not with such a high standard of writing so im very much looking forward to seeing how this pans out. Im hoping that we'll get a few more 'bro moments' from Goku and Vegeta too. **

**Just to confirm, is this set post buu? Also, a lot of great fics got readers through posting a link on dbz multiverse comments and I reckon that if this continues as it has done then it could be at least as good as most of them.**

Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad you like the fic, and the moment between Goku and Vegeta. I'll see if I can't get a few more of those in at some point, since you asked so nicely.

As for when the fic is set, yes, it is post-Buu. Specifically, the starting point of chapter 1 is set at some point during the ten years between the end of the Buu saga and the Strongest Under the Heavens tournament where Uub first appears, though most likely after the events of Battle of Gods; for reference's sake, the events of DBZ did occur in roughly the same manner as in canon, though with slight differences in the logic behind some occurences due to the initial setups. For instance, Kakarot was sent to Earth as an infant to act as an advance scout of sorts for the Planet Trade Organisation, having been deliberately volunteered for such by Bardock on account of his being seen as weak; on a more personal level, Vegeta was still obsessed with pride up to the Buu saga, but largely because he felt Frieza had taken it away from his race by drafting their forces into his army so brutally, with the same logic preventing him from returning to Plant after Frieza's downfall, as he felt that he couldn't return to his father having been outclassed by commoners and half-breeds, i.e. Goku and sons.

Also, because I failed to mention it before, I'll consider advertising on DBM's comments at some point, though whether or not I will may depend on whether or not comments can be made anonymously. That being said, I could be a scumbag and recruit the viewers to do it for me... but I'm not, so I won't.


	5. 3 - Or Exile

**Chapter 3 - Or Exile**

_Day five of exile, entry three of exile log. Goku or Kakka Carrot Cake or whatever his name is took me to see some old lady earlier today, saying she had some kind of abilities that might help him figure out what was up with my ky, which is apparently all sorts of crazy weird. Or, well, one sort._

_First of all, it's pronounced "ki", not "ky", which we both knew long before now. Second, are you really still narrating your own internal monologue?_

_Exile log._

_It doesn't matter what it is. We aren't going to remember it anyway, seeing as how it's not written down._

_Well, I'm bored, and want to talk to myself. So shuuush._

_There's a lot you could do that doesn-_

_SHUUUUSH._

_..._

_...but the lady couldn't figure stuff out. Said that wasn't what she did, or whatever. Apparently, he'd visited a royal person earlier, but that guy wasn't much help either, from what I gather. And yeah, that's true; I mean, when the super prince Vagina is just a big dumb idiot face, why would his father or the Tuffle king be any better?_

_There's more than two royal families in existence._

_YOU SAID YOU WOULDN'T TALK!_

_I agreed to nothing._

_Gurr. You're RUINING my exile log._

_It was ruined at "Kakka Carrot Cake"._

_Nuh-uh._

_He's called Kakarot. Or Goku, either one._

_Since when do you care?_

_Since I've needed to start keeping us both in good straits. I'd really rather we didn't get ourselves murdered by Prince "Vagina" or his cohorts, so learning everyone's names is a necessity. For _both_ of us._

_Bah. I could take him on any day._

_No you couldn't. Just go and spar with the humans, take your mind off of some stuff._

_Nnnnnmmnmnmhmnnrrmnrnrmrnr fine jeez._

* * *

><p>"Heeeey! Mister monkey!"<p>

"Oh, jeez..." Krillin sighed to himself as Demado walked up behind him. They were at least inside Kame House - specifically the kitchen, at this precise moment in time - so he wouldn't challenge the monk to another ridiculously one-sided fight. "Hey, Demado. What's up?"

"We are going to fight now."

_He must be joking,_ Krillin thought to himself, _there's no way he'd start a fight inside a building..._

"Ahaha, yeah, okay, you had me going there for a second." Krillin said in an effort to lighten up the mood, rubbing nervously at the back of his head and ruffling his hair slightly in the process. "I mean, I'm not in my training clothes right now..." Which was true enough; currently, Krillin was dressed in a pinstripe suit, black with a white shirt and red tie, worn to his proper job that day. Surely the Neo-Saiyan, in the same armour he had worn since day one, could see that those weren't fighting clothes.

"I am seriously serious right now bro."

_Oh Kami, not again._

"Uh... now, when you say 'fight', you do mean 'spar', don't you?" Krillin asked, a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead.

"...yyyyyyesss."

"...I'm not convinced."

"ToobadfightingbeginsNOW!" the Neo-Saiyan yelled, kicking the black-haired human hard in the face, flinging him through the nearest window with a tinkle of shattered glass, and several hundred meters across the ocean before he could slow his momentum to a halt. Well, they at least weren't in the house any more... the monk didn't have long to consider this slight positive, though, as his impromptu opponent propelled himself out of the same window, covering the distance Krillin had flown in significantly less time, and beginning to pummel the human's head with a barrage of punches which, whilst completely uncoordinated from his perspective, came so fast and hard that he barely managed to block most of them, and he could swear that the rest slightly distorted his facial structure every time they made contact.

Unsurprisingly, Krillin quickly began to lose energy, whilst Demado, even in base form, barely considered this a warm up. Such were the benefits of partial Saiyanism; what Krillin wouldn't give to have that sort of lineage right now. Finally, the monk managed to break away from the melee, somewhat exhausted from the storm of fists that had come his way.

"You said this was going to be sparring, damn it!" Krillin said, breathing heavily. "I technically told the truth, though," replied the hybrid, "because if we were going to actually fight, you'd be a dead son of a bitch right about now."

"Yeah, like I need that again..." Krillin muttered to himself under his breath.

"No, but seriously, do you have anything _interesting_ you could use against me? Like, something blast-ey or whatever?"

...oh, but he did.

"Welllll, I do have something a _liiittle_ bit special..." Krillin said, an uncharacteristic smirk on his face. He'd decided very quickly that he didn't like the Neo-Saiyan - Demado's personality switched between abrasively uncoordinated and unsettlingly polite on a dime, and he always seemed to want to "fight" Krillin, these being practically one-sided beatdowns that left the poor man aching every time, and usually bruised in at least five new locations, regardless of how often he mentioned his family. Not even the other humans; Demado targeted Krillin _specifically_ for such fights, like he'd done something to infuriate the hybrid in the past, even though they had known each other for only five days. And yet every time he tried to call him out on it, out came unsettling politeness to apologise for his prior brashness, and to perhaps agree to ask someone else next time, and then not half a day later to claim that he'd already sparred with someone else, and then to stand back and let mister abrasive kick him in the face for the tenth time in a row.

Well, he was sick of it. Every major threat to Earth since Goku's brother had all but kicked him around like he was nothing. Hell, he'd died three times so far in his life, and twice of those weren't even because he'd presented a threat - Frieza had blown him up out of nowhere to apparently prove a point, and whilst he was aware that he'd brought the other death on himself, he was still reasonably certain that Buu had only killed him because he could. He knew from years of personal experience that Goku was an infallibly nice person. He also considered Demado to be another major threat that could potentially end him and much of the rest of the planet's population, especially so if not properly leashed. Well, he was sure he'd be forgiven if he accidentally seriously injured his charge...

"Y'see, I've got this technique I use sometimes, against really strong opponents. The Kienzan, also known as the Destructo Disk. See if you can block it."

He was hoping he wouldn't be able to. Kid Buu had been cut in half by such an attack, and he figured that, since Demado was weaker than Goku had been after fighting Cell, and since Saiyan biology wasn't particularly any better defended than that of Buu, well, one good direct hit might take off an arm, or a leg, or a head. On the other hand... well, there were a lot of ways in which it could go wrong, he decided to put it to himself. For starters, if the Neo-Saiyan wasn't keen on-

"Alright, something fancy-sounding! Lay it on me!"

...first hurdle, overcome. Without hesitating, Krillin raised his hand over his head, and began charging the disk of ki up, a yellow-white blaze forming in his hand as the ki began spiralling to a finer and finer edge. Nearby, Demado prepared himself excitedly; or rather, he got ready to get excited, bouncing from foot to foot whilst still in the air. Actual preparation for the attack was minimal, it seemed. _Good,_ thought Krillin, _let it be a surprise._

Finally, the stage was set. With a roar, Krillin flung the energy disk at Demado. Closer and closer it flew, and the monk convinced himself that maybe things would go his way for once, Demado doesn't seem to be dodging, is it about to cut him in half diagonally...?

Alas, all in vain. At the last second, Demado transformed into the Super Saiyan state, and slammed his hands together on either side of the attack, stopping its progress mere centimeters from his chest, and then pressing together until the disk broke apart and dissipated harmlessly. Krillin's heart sank into his gut, and he prepared himself for the beating of a lifetime.

"So that sucked. Do you have any more of those I can stop?"

...wow. Just...

"Don't mock me."

"No, really, that was pretty close. The thrill of having sharp objects flying towards me. It's good. I prefer it to your lame blocking stuff. Throw more of them."

He... he was being serious, wasn't he? The monk honestly couldn't believe it; Demado _wanted_ to get cut apart, it seemed.

"Well," Krillin said with a grin plastered across his face, "since you asked so nicely... Multi-Form, go!"

All at once, three quarters of his inherent ki began to split off from him, dividing itself into three newly-formed shells of energy that circled around Demado, then moved well away from him; two of them floated to an angle below the Neo-Saiyan, whilst the third, and the original, moved to hover above Demado, similarly angled to the lower shells, though transposed ninety degrees horizontally to avoid striking the other shells. With the distances set, all four bodies began to charge up several disks each, the Neo-Saiyan spinning around to keep an eye on all four targets, but quickly dizzying himself doing so. After several seconds, all four Krillins yelled the name of the attack, and simultaneously flung their disks at Demado; halfway through their flight path, each disk further separated into a multitude of additional disks that ultimately surrounded Demado in a rough, ever-tightening sphere of spinning blades. A moment before impact, Demado's form became obscured in the densely-packed field of energy; a fraction of a second later, the disks began to explode as they all impacted against one another in a small area, ultimately forming a large sphere of apparent death that finally faded to reveal nothing within. Apparently, the attack had been overly effective - if Krillin wasn't mistaken, Demado had been utterly vaporised by the disks and/or the detonation.

"Man," the real Krillin mused to himself, "I should've used that against Frieza when I had the chance. I might actually have killed him with it..."

"Maybe you should work on your aim first?"

"You'd think so, but-"

The monk's words froze in his throat as he realised exactly whose ki signature had apparently appeared right behind him. Almost gently, Demado's hand clasped itself around the back of Krillin' neck, squeezing ever so slightly, as though threatening to snap his neck.

"So yeah, bored now."

With an abrupt spin on Demado's part, Krillin was flung bodily into one of the energy shells, blowing it apart and forcing the excess ki back into Krillin's body. Nearby, one of the other shells was thrown in a similar manner into the last one, and then this was thrown at Krillin himself, who, despite an attempt to evade it, was hit dead-on by the impromptu projectile, crying out as the shell smacked into him and dissolved back into him once more. Last, but not least, Demado grabbed Krillin by the neck again, then twisted himself sideways and began spinning repeatedly, gaining more and more momentum, and a louder and louder scream from Krillin, until he finally let go, launching the monk head-first toward the ocean at several times the speed of sound. The resulting impact and subsequent shockwave displaced many, many gallons of water, which then rushed back and spiked, then fell again, repeating the pattern several times before subsiding to ripples, and then to nothing that could be seen over the typical waves that presented themselves in the area. Roughly a minute passed before the monk surfaced, choking up seawater both swallowed and inhaled, and pulling a stray octopus out of his hair and dropping it back into the ocean.

"I call that the Spin Launcher Bomb Attack," Demado called down.

"THESE ARE WORK CLOTHES!" Krillin yelled back.

"All clothes are work clothes when you're a fighter. Now I'm double-bored. You're boring me."

"No wonder, huh!"

"...glad we're agreed on that, then. See ya."

As suddenly as he had started the battle, Demado flew back towards Kame House, leaving Krillin floating in the ocean, left with only his own thoughts to comfort him. And some comfort they were.

_Bruised and tired once again,_ he thought to himself, _and what am I going to say to Eighteen when she sees the state my suit is in? "Hey, I got in a fight with the probably homicidal maniac that lives at Kame House since five days ago, and he nearly drowned me by throwing me ten kilometers below the sea. By the way, sorry for not being around you and Marron more frequently in the last five days, I've had to keep the _homicidal maniac_ from injuring anyone else, which apparently involves him injuring _me_ a whole bunch instead."_

With a final groan, Krillin picked himself up and out of the water, and began slowly hovering back to Kame House. _Might as well catch the sun and dry my suit whilst I'm out here,_ he decided. He had nothing better to do, after all, and the longer he could delay another beating, the better.

* * *

><p><em>Day twenty ecks of exile, entry thirty two of exile log.<em>

_Oh for Guar's sake, I thought we agreed you wouldn't keep doing this?_

_I lied. Mu ha ha._

_Urgh... just keep it down, will you? I'm talking to Bulma about hybridisation between the various Saiyan-like species, and I don't want you distracting me. This could be big gains for us if we get in with her._

_...day twenty ecks of exile, entry thirty two of exile log. Having been moved to the underwear lady's big house a bunch of days ago, sis has been getting herself in cahoots with everyone living there. The silver-haired person and Prince Still-A-Vagina don't really like us being there, but the underwear lady and her science dad are okay with it. And the blonde woman is nice. I like her; she has nice things to say to people. Also, I figure I can ask her for candies and she'll give me loads whenever I want._

_Please tell me you didn't just say "candies". It- oh Guar damn it now look what you made me do._

_I am the best at mind games there is._

_You are the most distracting there is. Kindly forfeit the position to someone else._

_Nevar! Oh, more exile log: sis is working on the teleportation thingy and the splittery move still. The teleport is being douchey and not coopering, but what she thinks is that if we figure out how to do it properly, we can split ourselves into two permanent bodies at will, and we each control one of them. I figure that'll feel weird as a butt, but it'll also be super cool beans to have two fightan powers at once. Oh, and we'd also be able to recombine whenever, so we don't get lonely._

_And if we work on it from there, we should be able to reshape the one body however we like._

_...so boobs, then?_

_Don't get ideas. We're still related._

_Nononononononono, just... we can has them._

_...potentially._

_Yusss._

_They wouldn't look great on a more masculine frame._

_But we can also change that. S'not like Saiyans don't have all the bulk anyway, so..._

_Whatever. I'd use it for extra limbs in combat. And-or regeneration.  
><em>

_You've had dirty thoughts before, don't tell me you haven't._

_We are not going down this path._

_But-_

_END OF CONVERSATION SHUT UP._

_...'kay._

* * *

><p>"So the rules: it's a race around the world in that direction, we're allowed to fight one another to get ahead, and the winner is the first one back to the Capsule Corp building, or the one who doesn't fall unconscious if it comes to that. Agreed?"<p>

"That works for me."

"Alright then, get ready!"

Standing outside the aforementioned Capsule Corp building, both Demado and Trunks transformed into Super Saiyans - Trunks, in his turquoise-green gi, achieving the transformation almost instantly, and Demado within the span of several moments. They'd long since figured out that the younger of the two teenagers (Trunks' exact age skipped Demado's mind at that precise moment) was by far the stronger of the duo, but in the Neo-Saiyan's current mindset, it made for good practise to go up against a significantly stronger opponent when sparring, on account of increased gains over time. In this case, they'd agreed to a sort of combination fight-race - one that Trunks would almost surely win, of course, but a good way to extract a bit more fun out of an already reasonably fun activity.

"On your marks!"

Both hybrids knelt down and touched their fingers to the ground, adopting a stereotypical runner's starting pose; in neither case was their posture correct.

"Get set!"

Demado began tilting himself backward and forward repeatedly, in preparation for a good kickoff from the line (even though he didn't strictly need one).

"GO!"

In a double blur of gold energy, both Super Saiyans exploded into the race, quickly leaving their living quarters far behind them, and mere seconds later, the city it was located in to boot; even at this early stage, Trunks pulled ahead rapidly, leaving Demado a significant distance behind him. In an effort to regain the lead, the Neo-Saiyan began launching a stream of energy balls at his opponent; then, when these failed to faze his target, switched to barrages of energy fired all at once, bursting around the younger racer and slowing him down enough for Demado to catch up.

The two fighters quickly began brawling in mid-air, exchanging blows even as they continued to charge through the planet's lower atmosphere. In direct contrast to Demado's fights with Krillin, Trunks found himself more than fast enough to block most of the Neo-Saiyan's attacks; yet for lack of actual combat experience, the somewhat random nature of Demado's striking patterns meant that Trunks allowed more hits through his defenses than he might have cared to. Even so, the damage dealt to him was still only relatively minor, and he was hitting Demado back much more often, and with much greater force, with the end result that the Neo-Saiyan was eventually forced out of the melee to prevent further damage to himself.

"Hmm. Not bad, for a partial human." Demado said, though his words were lost to the wind but for Trunks' own superhuman hearing. The Neo-Saiyan's eyes, still hardened since before the battle's beginning, narrowed in anticipation of his next move. "But let's see how you deal with a Smart Bomb." He clenched one hand in an almost spasmic motion, and a ball of white energy began forming within his fist, forcing his fingers to expand outward as the diameter of the attack increased, until he finally flung an energy ball the size of his head towards the younger Super Saiyan.

"A smart bomb?!" Trunks yelled, shocked by the implication. He'd played top-down shooters before; he knew what a smart bomb was, and how large an area it could potentially cover. Well, not on his watch. As the attack barreled towards him, he redirected himself out of its path, flying upwards and away from Demado, such that the energy ball flew straight under him.

"Hah! You missed!" Yet even as he said this, Trunks had misgivings about whether it had served its purpose yet. Weren't smart bombs supposed to explode, even if they didn't hit anything...?

"Oh, I missed, did I?" replied Demado, raising the same hand as had thrown the energy ball and flicking his fingers towards himself just once. The sound of an approaching energy ball drew the silver-haired teen's attention, and he turned just in time for Demado's attack to strike him in the stomach, _then_ explode across a large area. _Note to self,_ Trunks thought wearily as the energy of the attack seared over him, _"smart" doesn't necessarily mean "explodes everything in sight"._

The explosion faded, leaving the youth only mildly scathed - even having charged the attack somewhat, Demado hadn't really succeeded in hindering Trunks long-term. He had, however, bought himself enough time to vanish almost across the horizon, currently only a streak of gold to Trunks; and indeed, the attack itself had been calculated to allow for such, the energy within being densely packed in such a way as to impede movement when it ultimately detonated, in addition to dealing damage. With a cry of "HEY! Get back here!", Trunks once again continued his flight path, quickly catching back up to Demado despite the previous lengths between them. Noticing the return of his opponent, Demado twisted around to face behind himself, and began launching another continuous stream of energy balls at Trunks. This was equally as ineffective as before - Trunks simply dodged around the energy bullets until he got up close to his opponent, then threw a punch into the Neo-Saiyan's face, distracing him for long enough to move behind him and propel a forceful kick into his back; by the time Demado recovered from this, Trunks had already taken a major lead. In a last-ditch effort to catch up, Demado began charging energy into his hands, then launched it at Trunks in the form of a powerful red-gold beam, only to have it countered by a white-gold blast fired from Trunks' direction, overpowering his attack and engulfing Demado completely.

By the time he escaped from the beam's damage zone, somewhat battered but otherwise no worse for wear, Trunks had vanished over the horizon.

* * *

><p>Half an hour later, Demado finally found his way back to the Capsule Corp building, only to see that Trunks, powered back down to his base form, was casually leaning against the side of the huge dome of the company's headquarters and chatting to another of the hybrids living on Earth - Goten, if the Neo-Saiyan recalled correctly, looking for all the world like a nearly-exact teenage miniature of his father, right down to the blue training shirt and orange gi. As they sensed the Neo-Saiyan's approach, both turned to look at him, a grin plastering itself over Trunks' face.<p>

"Heh. Looks like I won, then."

"Bah! Yoouu left me to fend for myself in the wilderness of existence." From his tone, hunched posture, crossed arms, and unfocused features, Demado was apparently back to being childish again. Trunks rolled his eyes at the revelation - he quite enjoyed the older hybrid's presence when he was acting rationally, but in this state, negotiating with him was... difficult, to say the least.

"Fend for yourself?" asked Goten sarcastically. "Jeez, you make it sound like you'd have trouble living on the planet."

"Well, I don't know what's good to eat and what isn't!" Demado complained, to a round of sweat drops from the other two hybrids. "What if I ingest some plant, and it turns out to be hallucinogenic?"

"People actually do stuff like that recreationally, you know."

"Wait, REALLY? Man, humans are idiots."

"Ahem!"

"...Saiyans are less smart than humans."

"Pardon you, SIR," Trunks began angrily, "but I've had a great education, and both my mother and father are HIGHLY intelligent examples of their respective races, so I'm pretty sure I couldn't be considered stupid." With a tilt of his head away from the two, he continued in a mischievous mutter, "Though I probably can't say as much of Goten..."

"Hey!"

"Yeah, BUT," Demado countered, "how do you know your parents aren't part Tuffle?"

"...uh. No, I'm almost certain they aren't."

"But think about it! The underwear lady-"

"Bulma."

"-the Bulma lady has bright blue hair, and her dad has weird hair, and they're both stupidly smart. And your prince dad has relatively really high intelligence as well, and his king dad has that _and_ hair like a Neo-Saiyan! It all fits, doesn't it?"

"Neo-Saiyans are shorter than Saiyans. And lots of humans have weird-coloured hair. Actually, lots of humans are downright inhuman in appearance... like our king, for instance."

"Recessive genes."

"Yeah, this is sounding less and less likely," Goten added.

"Nonono, BUT," Demado continued, gesticulating wildly with both hands and tail, "because genes can be passed down through family lines for long amounts of time without doing stuff, and then they get activated for whatever reason and they apply the effects to the person. And they wouldn't even need to be in conjunction with other genes, necessarily: Prince Your Dad is a bit shorter than the average Saiyan, but not quite as short as most Neo-Saiyans, and he also isn't insane other than PRAAHda, and King His Dad is only a bit taller and has the fancy brown hair. And then Princess Consort Your Mum has blue hair and is really smart by human standards, and Princess Consort Father Her Dad is also really smart. So I'm just saying that maybe Tuffles hit Earth a bunch of time ago somehow and interbred with humans, and then most of the genes got bred out except the ones for ultra-smartness and slight shortness, which are only now activated in your granddad and your mother and you. And the same thing on Plant too, but with Saiyans, hence the royal lineage."

By this point, Trunks and Goten had both blanched quite a bit. Though he hated to agree with someone who probably didn't know what they were talking about, what the Neo-Saiyan had said very nearly made sense to the silver-haired teen, other than the arrival of Tuffles on Earth, and if they were as advanced as he'd heard... well, theoretically, anything might be possible in that regard. He made a mental note to ask Dr. Briefs about his ancestors and general family tree later on.

"...moving on-"

"How does it feel to be a part of the master race?"

"MOVING ON. Uhhhh... I won the race, so... better luck next time, I guess."

"We both know I can't beat you in a race off."

"True. I am simply the best there is."

"Except for my dad, and your dad, and my brother..."

"The _best_."

An awkward silence followed, wherein the two human hybrids shuffled their feet aimlessly, and the Tuffle hybrid found himself gazing into the far distance, tail lashing randomly.

"So hey," Goten asked, "since we already sparred, and don't have much else to do, you wanna play some video games, Demado?"

The Neo-Saiyan slowly turned his head away from whatever he was staring at to face Goten, eyes narrowed.

"...what's a video games?" he asked suspiciously.

"It's, uh..." Goten struggled for words for a moment. "Well, they're like interactive movies, sort of. You control a character to complete objectives and get further into the game."

"...I don't follow."

"I... think it'll be easier to show you."

* * *

><p><em>Day twenty ecks eye of exile, entry thirty three of exile log. My childhood has been ruined.<em>

_Your childhood is fine._

_But it didn't have VIDEO GAMES in it. Hence, it has been retroactively ruined by lack of video games._

_I'm hijacking this log for better entries._

_Wait-_

_Development of new techniques is coming along well-_

_No- stop-_

_Shut up- We're getting th-_

_YOU SHUT UP-_

_No-_

_MAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAH_

_Stop it-_

_**MAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAHMAH**_

_Oh Guar, fine! Talk about the stupid fucking video games, then!_

_Thank you, sister._

_...you're a child sometimes._

_I am a teenager who has been deprived of video games, and so are you. So these video games, they're like interactive movies..._

_Uuuugh..._

* * *

><p><em>At last, the impeccable chapter 3 of Divergence: Neo-Saiyanism arrives, after two weeks of laziness and power issues! Review, comment, praise, whatever. Remember, though: the key word is "constructive", "Guar" is a Saiyan deity whose myth is derived from the tale of the Original Super Saiyan God and is not to be confused with "Puar" the cat-rabbit boy-girl creature, and chewing sugar-free gum helps keep your teeth clean (or so the adverts would have us believe).<br>_

_Also, because I'm just a nice guy, I'm going to start adding bits of relevant information down in these Authors Notes every so often. This week, explanations of the three Saiyan-like races and their hybrids._

**Human**

They number several billion on their home planet of Earth, come in a number of non-human varieties, tend to be naturally poor ki users without the aid of martial artistry to help them train their ki - and even then require many, many years of focused practice to get to any sort of high level usage, though they have a propensity to develop specialised ki-focusing techniques to make up for this - and have not yet developed the ability to travel through space _en masse_. Otherwise unexceptional. Estimated Average I.Q.: 100.

**Saiyan**

Big, brutish battlers. We know what Saiyans are - a warrior race that is possessed of many a unique trait, including static hairstyles, the ability to come back from near-death stronger than ever, and, when pushed to high enough levels of power and stress, the ability to utilise various levels of the Super Saiyan form, up to and including the divine Super Saiyan God. In this continuum, they are relatively many compared to canon, due to not having their entire planet exploded by an genocidal galactic emperor; those living on Plant tend to be somewhat more civilised than their canon counterparts, whilst those who survived in Frieza's army are... well, they're better soldiers than they might otherwise be, let's put it like that. Estimated Average I.Q.: 80.

**Tuffle**

An exceptionally technologically advanced species, they were the developers of the energy-reading scouters, and in this continuum the creators of the superweapons known as the Mother Drones. The average Tuffle is relatively short and small-bodied, to cope with Plant's high gravity, and it is almost universally agreed that they are, if not the most intellectual species in the universe, then certainly one of the highest on that scale. Estimated Average I.Q.: 130.

**Human-Saiyan**

Human-Saiyan hybrids are possessed of many of the features of a Saiyan, including tails and the propensity to become ridiculously powerful, but lack the drive to train themselves in the way a pure-blooded Saiyan of this continuum might do outside of a crisis, as well as the truly static hair styles (and in certain cases, hair colour) of pure Saiyans. Perhaps in compensation, they tend to possess higher levels of hidden potential than pure Saiyans, which may or may not reveal itself sporadically depending on how enraged a given hybrid becomes (citation needed), or appear in the form of the same ki-focusing techniques that human ki users are partial to. Relatively very rare, since the cases in which Saiyan and human have had chance or cause to mate are few and far between. Estimated Average I.Q.: 95 (larger sample size required for more accurate reading, as majority of current cases are exceptionally intelligent).

**Saiyan-Tuffle ("Neo-Saiyan")**

The only form of hybrid currently ubiquitous enough to warrant its own name, Neo-Saiyans combine Saiyan strength, tails and ki ability with Tuffle intellect, hair colour and size, which would be great if not for the fact that more than half of them die of horrible deformation at or before birth, and that the remainder tend to be varying degrees of insane (Neo-Saiyan to Neo-Saiyan mating has yet to be tested for both, due to the relative youth of the hybrid species in this age). Due to mostly being supremacists thus far, Neo-Saiyans tend to spur themselves into training to prove their point (as opposed to being naturally drawn into it), and so fail to possess large reservoirs of hidden potential like human-Saiyan hybrids. Estimated Average I.Q.: 115.

**Tuffle-Human**

No known examples currently exist, and no notable examples from the past can currently be cited. Presumably, they would have a height average between humans and Tuffles, therefore holding an average height slightly less than that of the typical Neo-Saiyan, and possess similar hair colours to Tuffles for lack of variety in humans; otherwise, traits are not likely to present themselves until a situation wherein a Tuffle and a human bear children is produced. Estimated Average I.Q.: 125 (sample required to prove).

**Human-Saiyan-Tuffle - any fraction combination  
><span>**

...good luck figuring this out. Estimated Average I.Q.: Whatever.


	6. 4 - Escapé is Not a Real Word

_So gee, I let this slide out of the work pile for no good reason. But hey, we're back now, apologies to the people following it who expected more, and let's hope it's all the more polished for my, uh, "thinking time". Yeah, let's say that's what it was._

* * *

><p><span><strong>Chapter 4 - "Escapé" is Not a Real Word<strong>

_Day forty veye of exile, entry whatever of exile log. Sis thinks she's finally gotten the whole split technique down to a ghost party, and-_

_A what?_

_Ghost party. Like, er... scenes._

_Did you mean seance? Or perhaps _science,_ since that's presumably what you were going for in the first place?_

_Sure, whatever._

_Yeah, so I've gotten that technique fixed up quite handily. It's not brilliant yet; so far, the best I can come up with is a temporary body for one of us to control, whilst the other one takes our real body. The temporary body should be longer-lasting and more functional than those energy shells some of the other humans were using from time to time, by dint of actually having a conscious persona keeping it active, but I figure dispelling it may or may not be difficult, given the presence of proper organs and such. And, well... I have no idea how our consciousnesses would react to having the brain structures behind them suddenly zapped out of existence. Maybe they get sucked back into the real body, or maybe the controller just ceases to exist. Still, you only live once..._

_Well, I mean, like... that whole "ceasing to exist" thing is a bit bad. I don't want to suddenly stop being a person, right? And what about if the shell is stabbed to death, what happens to us then?_

_Ideally, the former scenario is what happens in both cases. Still, we'll never figure it out if we don't at least try it._

_Sure, but- oh hey, you were contributing to the exile log just now!_

_...nnnnoo._

_Yeah, you were! You didn't even realise it, did you?_

_No, I wasn't. I was, er... dictating how the technique works to the extra-dimensional beings looking over our dialogue._

_Pffft. Like that'd ever be a thing. Ha, I win, the log was a good idea all along._

_Yeah, well... maybe just start discussing to yourself how we intend to test it?_

_Oh, right! Sohs, how we test it is by hijacking that spess shep Blue Cheeseburger Woman and Male Parental Figure were talking about testing a couple a nights a go a woah a woah._

_...about a week again. And apparently, exactly forty five days is an inordinately precise timing for that._

_Not forty five _days,_ silly! Forty five _nights,_ and they're Ee-Arth Nights, which are probably shorter than Plant Nights, so not that precise? I dunno._

_...it's pronounced "erth"._

_Wait, really? I thought it was "Ee-Arth" all this time!_

_Well, it's not._

_Then why is there an "E" at the beginning of it?_

_It's a silent letter- no, the "_a_" is silent, and you should be asking why there's an "a" in... okay, so why would you think the "E" is the problem there?_

_Oh man, you mad as hell about this. I'm just going to keep calling it "Ee-Arth" from now on, then._

_I- you- nnnrrrrrgh... sloppy grammar aside, I'm hoping that after tonight, we won't have any further problems to deal with._

_Why- oh, right, escape. Yeah, and we won't need the exile logs any more, because there won't be exile!_

_...indeed._

* * *

><p>Night fell; time passed; and the various atomic clocks in the Briefs household eventually struck one in the morning, precisely on the dot. Two or three minutes later, should anyone have happened to be awake to see it, one might have spied a short, red-haired humanoid with a rapidly-twitching monkey tail, as red-furred as the hair on the being's head, sneaking quite dramatically out of the room they were nominally sequestered in for the time being. Technically speaking, there were no rules in place at that precise time that stopped the being in question from being up at this hour, but the fact that he was, with no obvious reason regarding why, lifting each leg absurdly high into the air (relative to himself, of course) before gently placing it down on the ground, toes first, before beginning his next leg lift would suggest to all viewers that he was, as some would say, "up to no good".<p>

Of course, anyone who knew him for even a few minutes might suspect it as a mere artifact of his personality that he was never planning anything good, but for cliche's sake, it was all the more obvious for his exaggerated motions. After four such lift-and-places, he paused, then returned to a relatively normal pose and scurried round the nearest corner, peering back after he'd passed it before pressing himself to the wall and sliding along it, apparently pressing himself into it for half the length of the corridor, in a parody of stealthy maneuvering.

* * *

><p><em>You know all this posturing is ridiculous, right? We're going to be in trouble if we get caught, regardless of how suspicious we're acting.<em>

_Yeah, yeah, you said that the first two times. Lemme hev some fun._

_And on that note, the fact that we're still in a state that we can refer to ourselves as "we" is a problem, too. Get away from the wall, I need to split us up._

* * *

><p>With a sigh, the being walked away from the wall, into the middle of the corridor, then turned to face down it in the direction he'd come from in the first place, adopting a relaxed pose for what was to come next.<p>

* * *

><p><em>Now, on three.<em>

_My three, or your three?_

_...my count._

_Yeah, that thing._

_Right. One, two, three._

* * *

><p>And, quite abruptly, the red-haired hybrid apparently walked out of himself, one body leaving another behind. After half a second's pacing, the newly-formed body stopped, then turned to the original, a gleam of triumph in its otherwise hard-set eyes.<p>

"And now we are two," the clone stated, the rough tone of its voice echoing through the corridor briefly. "And I even managed to replicate our clothes on to this one. Brilliant work, me."

"Yeah, we rule," the original Demado responded, "we're the best."

"That I am."

"Yaas."

A lull in the conversation.

"...er. How does this help us-me-usses, again?"

"Simple: two people working in concert should be able to cover twice as much ground. And, if I'm not mistaken..."

The clone-body closed its eyes for a brief moment.

* * *

><p><em>...we should be able to communicate telepathically, so we're not caught out if one of us finds the ship.<em>

_Ohhh, shiiiiit! How's this working out, then?_

_Well, we've been sharing the same body for quite literally our entire lives. I figured that we'd be easily able to retain mental communication for sheer familiarity with one another, just by a quick mental scan of an area... but, I figured we may as well not risk anything, so I deliberately included a telepathic link between the clone-body and this body. Sort of like the additional features some scouters have. And just in case, I've made the link pretty secure too, so nobody should be reading our minds whilst we talk any time soon. Nobody who's not strong enough to overpower it, anyway, and they'd have to figure out what we were doing in the first place._

_Aw, that's awesome. Oh, but does that mean we don't need to cross over each others' paths whilst we search?_

_If we keep in touch, then realistically, that should be the case._

_Neeaaaat-oh. So do we get going now, or later?_

* * *

><p>"Now, I believe," the clone said bluntly, opening its eyes and turning smartly on its heels before walking off down the corridor. "You take the East side of the compound, I'll search the Western side."<p>

"I wanted to do West, though. West is best!"

"Too bad," came the call, just as Demado's clone disappeared round the corner. A slight huff emerged from the mouth of the original, but he brightened up momentarily, and began a light skip in the direction he was originally headed, humming a meaningless tune as he did. _He'd be glad to finally escape the planet,_ he thought to himself. _And better yet, free space in his head, but that's a debatable benefit. My head. Me my mo. I wonder whether you can make free space into an eatable form? That'd be crazy like what..._

* * *

><p>The gravity in the Gravity Chamber slowly decreased from one of its higher settings, until it normalised at Earth's standard gravity. For the Prince of All Saiyans- or, as he called himself, Vegeta- there was barely any difference; he'd long since trained himself to withstand far more than a mere 50000% Earth gravity, and was in fact considering asking his partner of many years to upgrade the machine once again. It was true that at this stage in his life, he was making only minute amounts of progress towards improvements in his power and technique, especially considering that he'd never figured out the secret to unlocking Super Saiyan 3, the elusive yet monstrously powerful form that Son Goku alone seemed to have the knack of; along the same lines, he'd accepted many years ago that he was practically guaranteed to never surpass his rival in terms of any of the above, and made peace with himself in that regard.<p>

Yet still he trained, for he now had many more responsibilities than he once did. Once upon a lifetime ago, it was all about him, and not even fellow members of his own species were worth keeping alive if they weren't of use to him. Now, he had responsibilities, people and places to defend should the need arise: a wife in Bulma, a child- perhaps even two children, if he wasn't mistaken about Bulma's recent moods- and a planet... maybe two planets, if he counted Earth. And whilst he had no particular attachment to the Earth itself, he'd admit that he had, in fact, lived here longer than he'd lived even on Plant, and in some perverse way grown attached to the pre-space-faring world in the process...

Though he'd admit that if one thing frustrated him the most, it was precisely that feature - the lack of fast, or even reliable space travel meant that, by and large, he had to rely on Kakarot to get between Earth and Plant with any sort of brevity, moreso than he cared to admit even at this stage. But then, that was why Bulma and Dr. Briefs had been working on the spaceship. By this point, it was in its final testing stages - the two scientific minds had input the rough coordinates of New Namek and Plant to the ship, and with their claims of having produced "an even more powerful engine" for the thing, he expected that he'd be able to get to the former in no more than a day, and the latter in maybe three or four... which was still too much time for his liking, but since Goku still hadn't taught him to Instant Transmit despite all the hints proposing he do so, and Vegeta himself had failed to determine the ins-and-outs of what to do by his own merits (a fact that frustrated him to no end - it was apparently the sort of technique that absolutely needed a teacher to tell you what to do, and if the teacher was Goku...), well, that was his best proposition right now if his Earth-raised rival happened to be pre-occupied for some reason. He briefly wondered why he hadn't simply commandeered a ship of his own earlier, then dismissed the thought. He suspected there'd be a ruckus if either Earth or Plant's inhabitants saw such a thing landing for the first time, the former for fear of invasion, and some of the latter out of some form of misplaced wish to blow up the big metal thing that fell out of the sky near their homes, but either way...

Having changed back into his casual clothing, he left the chamber, preparing to return to bed... then paused for a moment, his attention drawn by something his ki senses told him was happening, but that his conscious brain presumed to be impossible at first glance.

_Is that Demado?_ he wondered. _And... is that two of him?_

He frowned at the thought. "There's no way that can be right," he continued to himself out loud, "it must be sleep-deprivation getting to me..."

Yet the two identical signatures remained. Briefly. After several moments, one of them dropped to nil, leaving just the other. He continued to sense out the situation until he could be sure that he was just kidding himself, surely the damn fool hadn't learned to turn himself into two equally strong beings... but no, it was just the one at the moment. _And why,_ he asked himself, _is the one up so late at night...?_

There were questions being raised by all of this. Vegeta intended to find answers for them, whether or not Demado was willing to answer. Locking on to the former signature, he began a brisk walk in the direction of what he assumed was the errant Neo-Saiyan, soon closing in on him, only to find that he didn't appear to be doing anything even vaguely suspicious. Just walking, it seemed... or rather, having heard Vegeta's approach, stopped walking and bent over to look at him from between his own legs, tail flailing around and smacking him in the face several times in the process. Still...

"And pray tell, what brings you to wander around the establishment at this time of night?" the Saiyan prince asked in as polite a tone of voice as he could muster (which was surprisingly polite, given the rather rude demeanour that Demado could put on a lot of the time, and which Vegeta suspected he was about to be subjected to yet again).

"Walkin'." came the response, in an uncoordinated drawl. "Whuzzur you doon?"

"...training, up until a moment ago." Vegeta said, after taking a moment to figure out what the hybrid had tried and failed to communicate. "I sensed your energy, and wondered what you were doing. You're not normally up so late."

"Yeah, well, I was jus..."

The Neo-Saiyan flipped his torso back to an upright position, then turned to face the Saiyan Prince, arms continuing to move round as far as they could long after the body had stopped.

"I was jus' walkin', wasn't I? So, yeh noh, you're just being mad for no reason, mister Lord High Inquisitor General... Inquisitor Man Guy Banana."

"That was not even close to my title, nor were you even vaguely correct regarding my name."

"Well, y'know..."

A moment passed as Demado apparently attempted to come up with something relevant.

"...shut up I know how to words."

"Hn. Clearly."

It seemed to Vegeta that he'd been mistaken... at least this time around. He tried to keep an eye on Demado as often as he could whilst he'd been living in the Briefs household, just in case he tried anything on with his family- and his extended family, contribution of his wife, though these only numbered two present- but he was acutely aware that the Saiyan-Tuffle hybrid could not always be kept track of, especially when the Prince's time was being taken up back on Plant. Still, he'd so far not returned to any fatalities or... well, Guar forbid worse than that... so he couldn't simply kill Demado and be done with him, not without breaking his word. And he was nothing if not honourable in that regard. But that didn't change his opinion on the Neo-Saiyan - there was no telling when he'd snap and decide to kill the entire city, and there were no Mother Drones around to stop him if he did... it'd be down to the protectors of Earth to handle him, and there was every possibility, even a significant likelihood, that they'd fail to do so before he'd taken at least one life. And if that was one of their loved ones...

But right now, the Saiyan prince had precisely the means with which to keep the Neo-Saiyan exile at hand. "Walk with me." he said. "I'd like to speak to you about a few things."

"But what if I don't want to-"

"_Now,_ inferior."

"Okay."

Vegeta continued walking through the corridors of the building, Demado following along on his left hand side with what started at a light step, then upgraded to a trot, then a bounce, and was finally stopped from developing into outright jumping or flying along when Vegeta had to physically push him down to walking height again.

"Sooooo..." the Neo-Saiyan began in a sing-song voice. "You wanted to talk to me. What about?"

"First of all, I could swear I felt two energy signatures matching yours earlier-"

"No."

"...very quick to-"

"Your scouter lied to you there's only one me in existence, how dare you suggest I'm two people. Douche."

"...I'll ignore the insult, and assume you're telling the truth. In which case, my second question, one I've been meaning to ask for a while... what's with the energy blade you can form?"

"What? Ohhh, you meaaaann..."

Drawing his left hand in to his chest, Demado flung his arm out, forming the same ultra-concentrated crimson energy blade that Vegeta had sensed the power of way back at the grudge match between Demado and Iago. He'd already known it was powerful even by his standards - energy blades typically were much stronger than their wielder's nominal power level, and much as he'd never admit it to anyone ever, even Krillin's Kienzan might pose some trouble for him to fend off if its edge ever actually made contact - but sensing the power this blade emitted from such close range, he determined that it was quite simply ludicrous. Proportionately speaking, this blade was far stronger than any Destructo Disk of Krillin's, and amplified by Demado's already-massive power as a Super Saiyan, even one of the weaker than average ones... well, it had proven strong enough to pierce, even effortlessly slice through the energy barriers of the arena he'd fought in a month and a half ago. Thinking about it, Vegeta wondered if such a weapon might not be able to cut through even Buu's defenses like a sharp knife through paper if it hit.

If it hit. That was always the problem with such attacks; all the power was focused to an edge, which held its own problems against regenerating foes like Cell, but there was rarely any focus on speed in the process. As such, the attacks were typically no faster than a standard ki projectile- or, in the case of blades projected from an arm, no faster than the user could throw their attacking limbs accordingly- and they were therefore no use against opponents that were already that much faster than them, in addition to being a relatively great drain on energy over time. _Much like Ultra Super Saiyan..._ Vegeta mused quietly. _Lots of power, but too slow to direct it appropriately. Probably why I never came up with one for myself..._

Speaking of "slow", Demado had stopped walking and begun swinging the makeshift weapon around in his personal space, taking the time to make practiced swipes at first, but beginning to flail more and more erratically as time passed, until he was in danger of hitting the now-stationary Vegeta with it. And one such swipe, whether by accident or by design, had indeed started a course toward's Vegeta's head and neck; yet without exerting much effort at all, the Saiyan prince caught the offending limb just below the elbow joint long before it would've made contact (to his own perception, anyway), drawing a gasp from the offender in question.

"Uhhhh..."

"Pay attention. Next time, you may unintentionally lash out at someone with less self-control than myself."

After a moment, Demado nodded seriously, and allowed the energy blade to shrink... pardon, grow outward past Vegeta's head, until it very nearly pierced through the metal of the corridor's far corner.

"Put it away."

With a grimace at the harsh tone of voice, the Neo-Saiyan allowed the weapon to dissipate into nothingness once more. Only then did Vegeta finally let go of his arm, the grasp of which Demado pulled away from like it was some form of deadly virus, rubbing at it to soothe the ache from being gripped so tightly.

"So, to clarify regarding my prior question..." Vegeta began, continuing to move on, and gesturing to Demado to do the same, "I have three points. One: where did you get the inspiration to come up with that sort of technique for yourself? Two: how and why is it so concentrated? And three: how do you get it to change its length?"

"Ooooo, tough questions." Demado said, in what might have been a jovial tone were it not for the glint of annoyance in his eyes... had they hardened up in the past few minutes, or was he still suffering from the effects of sleep deprivation? "I'll have to get my sister involved in thisssss..."

"...go on, then." Vegeta prompted, wondering at the comment about Demado's non-existent sister, which presumably manifested as his alternate personality. With a smile and a head tilt, Demado closed his eyes, then opened them again, no longer smiling. Vegeta, paying close attention, noted the distinct lack of change to his eyes... as if they'd never been unfocused in the first instance. What on Earth was going on with that?

* * *

><p><em>Siiiiis! I found the spaceship!<em>

_Ah. Good work. Bring it outside, start it up._

_But siiiiis...!_

_What is it?_

_I don't know how to fly it._

_...ah._

_Yooouu didn't factor that in, did you._

_Erm. No._

_Woooow. Sooo cooool._

_Shut up. Look, just... take it outside, go into the ship, see if there's any sort of autopilot available to it._

_Gurrr. _You_ suck at planning._

_It's fine, it'll be fine. Just don't expend too much ki moving it about. I'll cover for you._

* * *

><p>Quite abruptly, Demado stepped ahead of Vegeta and began powering himself up in front of him, prompting the Saiyan to take a step back at what might have been a sudden threat, and then another as the short hybrid entered his Super Saiyan form - with, Vegeta noted, a very large amount of noise for so late at night, even if he himself was used to it. Well, if the rest of the household wasn't awake before...<p>

"Why're you doing that?" Vegeta asked suspiciously. "You're going to wake everyone else up."

"You're trying to take my technique knowledge, I fear." Demado stated in what was presumably meant to be quite a reasonable tone, yet held an edge of biting menace to it that quite simply hadn't been present in Vegeta's previous discussions with this side of him. Impotent menace, he reminded himself; as an ex-soldier of Frieza's elite forces, not much could truly faze him, and even in his base form, the Super Saiyan known as Demado wasn't much of a threat to the Prince of All Saiyans. "Can't let you do that, Star Monkey."

"You know you can't... wait, what?"

"Uh, like from the game. Space Furry series, or whatever. Dog, I think. Did you know there were such things as video game consoles before two weeks ago? I didn't."

"...uh huuuh... as I was saying, you know you can't overpower me just by turning into a Super Saiyan. Besides, I have no use for energy blades anyway."

"Alright, well, I guess I have to tell you aaaaalll about it, then."

_...well, I certainly wasn't expecting that._

"Oh. Maybe power down, then..."

"No, I think better like this."

Now that was a lie, Vegeta was sure. From his own experience as a Super Saiyan, before reaching its Full Power state, becoming a Super Saiyan was never beneficial to one's rational thought, and certainly wouldn't help Demado think better in any way. A lie then; but for what purpose? What piece of the puzzle was he missing, Vegeta asked himself...

"So, to answer your previous questions." Demado began. "Inspiration came from outside observation; I saw that a few other Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans had energy blades, aaaand..."

He paused to think briefly.

"...nnnnine times out of ten, they won their fights handily. I just, eh... copied what they did, but better... which brings me to point two. 'Why' and 'how'. 'Why' would be answered by my belief that- and I take a brief moment out of my explanation at this point to quote and subsequently unquote myself- "stronger is always better". You knooow, _juuust_ in case I go up against something I can't beat otherwise - even if they're strong enough to tank quite literally everything else I can throw at them with ease, without even _trying..._ I only need to get lucky once with the knife. That's what I call it, "the knife". Good name, in my opinion, simple and to the point. And, er, pardon the pun, if you will. 'Point', yes, no? Ah, well. As for 'hhhhoooowww'... wwwwelllll."

He took a couple of moments to chuckle to himself over some unseen joke.

"'How' simply involves putting as much ki into the cutting edges as possible, which I've given much practice over to in my time, you know. It's pretty efficient, too, if I do say so myself, not much energy wastage, and especially not if I draw that energy back into myself after I'm done using it. Did you know you can do that with energy blades? Because you can, it's a very economical technique. And as for changing the length? That's just a matter of pushing the excess ki outward with more of the same. Not so difficult, all things considered. And, er, that's it, really. That's all he wrote."

"Ah. Well, that was... very informative." Vegeta said, having processed the information overflow to draw out and store only the relevant bits. "Thank you. And now you can power down from Super Saiyan, right?"

"Welllllll, I meeeeaaaan... yyyyyes, and nnnnooooo."

"What's that suppose to mean?"

"Yyyyyyes, I _cooouuuuld_ power down from Super Saiyaaaan... _bbbbuuuuuut_ at the same tiiiiiime... nnnnnnnnooooooooo, I pppprrrroooooooobably don't _wwwwwwaaaaaaant_ ttttoooooo..."

_He's stalling,_ Vegeta abruptly realised. _He's trying to make time pass for some reason, he has been since he started the explanation. Maybe even before then. But _what?_ What the hell is he planning to _do?

It was at this point that he started to feel the loud rumblings of a very powerful engine indeed through the ground.

"...what is that."

"I could not say for the life of me."

"Demado, I know you know. Answer the question, and tell me what _that_ is," Vegeta threatened, lifting the Neo-Saiyan by the lapels with one hand and pointing at _that_, the now ungodly loud roar coming from outside with the other, "or I will honest to Guar rip your head off on the spot, whether or not Kakarot would disapprove!" He finished his speech at close to a yell, partially to be heard over the din, but partially out of sheer anger.

"Well, I mean..." Demado said, in an almost-uneasy tone.

Almost. Vegeta's lips curled into a snarl, which was quickly replaced by a surprised expression when, out of nowhere, the biggest, most shit-eating grin he'd ever seen sprouted on the hybrid's face.

"Goodbye," he spoke through his teeth in a low voice.

"Goodbye? _What?_"

And then he was clutching nothing more than thin air. No warning, no indication that the pint-sized madman was about to vanish - just there one moment, then gone the next, right down to the ki signature.

Which was now rising higher and higher, faster and faster, into the atmosphere of planet Earth.

"_...WHAT?!_"

* * *

><p>After a minute or two of navigating the familiar halls, Vegeta charged out of the place he called "home" for at least some of his life, just in time to watch the last faint glimmers of the ship- <em>his<em> ship, built for _him_ to move around- vanishing from view in the upper atmosphere of Earth.

The bastard had tricked him. Somehow, some way, he'd figured out how to teleport, or create clones of himself, or _something,_ and had somehow moved the ship outside and launched it as he was talking to Vegeta- the prince even saw the imprints in the dirt from where the ship had been set down- and then managed to get into it straight from where he'd been held by Vegeta, _as it had begun flying away,_ and it was by now well beyond Vegeta's ability to fly after it, or even try to take it down with a well-aimed ki blast. Despite everything else it could do, despite the ludicrous, solar system-annihilating power the Ascended Super Saiyan possessed, the one thing that no amount of bog-standard mortal ki could manage was to break the speed of light, at least not without some specialist technique to do it with, maybe based off of some insane theoretical physics that the Prince of Saiyans unfortunately had no knowledge of - yet there went the spaceship, using some souped-up variant of the technology that had been standard in the Planet Trade Organisation's ships back in the day to casually inform the laws of physics that they could go fuck themselves, perhaps with an astutely-raised middle finger or two to boot.

And he might have seen through the ploy before it was too late, had he not insisted on training to such a late hour beforehand. Then again, he might not have had the chance to be tricked by it at all if he had been asleep at the time. If he had been a Super Saiyan 2 at that precise moment, maybe he'd have gotten mad enough to ascend to that rarified third level, even through the long-determined fact that that simply wasn't enough to achieve Super Saiyan 3, that something else was missing to trigger the transformation; as it was, he was angry as anything for a substantial amount of time, but slowly losing steam as impotent rage gave way to weary acceptance.

"What the hell is going on, Vegeta?"

_And then there's _this_ b-... _this_ to deal with._

"I was woken up a few minutes ago by the sound of someone turning into a Super Saiyan." Bulma continued, just as furious as Vegeta had been mere moments ago. "Lo and behold, when I go to check the Gravity Chamber, your training clothes are stained with sweat, when I explicitly asked you not to train so late into the night any more. And _then_ I find that the spaceship my dad and I spent three months building has been stolen just as we're about to verify that it's good for takeoff, and _then_ some Godawful noise starts up outside, and I come outside to see someone taking off in the ship I built for you. Are you even paying attention?!"

"Bulma."

"Yeah, that's who you're dealing with right now, bud! Oh, if I had any amount of ki at my disposal-"

"He's escaped, Bulma."

"...who?"

"Take a wild guess. The person who was exiled here a month and a half ago. The person who wormed his way into our household, got himself set up as some sort of acquaintance because everyone else was too trusting of him, and then took the first opportunity at hand to rid himself of us. The person who presumably has some sort of grudge against any life form that isn't him, and is probably very willing indeed to use the ludicrous power at his disposal to kill as many people as possible before we even have a chance of catching up with him."

"...oh. That guy, huh."

"Yeah."

For a while, they both simply stared up into the sky.

"I should kill him for breaking the conditions of his exile."

"The massive time investment I lost aside, did you ever say he couldn't leave Earth? I'm not sure he'd appreciate you offing him for doing something you never said he couldn't do."

Ponderously, Vegeta turned to his wife and sunk his head on to her shoulder, sighing deeply as he did.

"It's okay, Vegeta," she said soothingly, placing one hand on his back and rubbing lightly, "it's okay. It's hard dealing with genocidal aliens... it's hard, and nobody but us understands."

At this, Vegeta tilted his head over her shoulder to stare at her in a thoroughly unimpressed fashion, as if to say _you don't know what you're talking about._

"Hey, you were a genocidal alien once too! And he's been under _our_ roof this whole time, not just yours. But still, you haven't exactly lost him, since you can presumably sense his ki just fine even from all the way down here. He probably doesn't know how to fly that thing beyond the pre-sets anyway, so it'll probably take him a day or so even to get to Namek. That's twenty four hours. More than enough time to find Goku, tell him what happened, get him to Transmit over to them, and bring him and the ship back safe and sound. But right now," she continued in her soothing voice, "you're probably very sleep-deprived, so I'd suggest going to bed, maybe making some hot chocolate for yourself... maybe we could get it on before going to sleep, y'know? I think we'd both appreciate some stress relief... and we talk to Goku tomorrow about getting back what's been lost tonight. Sound fair?"

"Now's probably a bad time, but it occurred to me earlier that I could've just requested a flagship from the Plantian fleet this whole time."

"Oh, screw you."

"Yeah, I was, uh... ahem, going to take you up on that previous offer of yours..."

"Well, since you're so polite about it..."

Bulma smiled, and, ending the impromptu hug, took Vegeta's hand and turned to head back into the building with him. And there was Trunks standing right behind them in his pyjamas, arms folded, and a thoroughly disgusted expression on his face.

"First of all, ew, never talk about sex in public again, and definitely not in front of me. Second, I take it there's nothing I can do to help out in this situation?"

"...go back to bed, Trunks."

"Hhhh... yes, dad."

* * *

><p><em>We did it! We did it, we did it, yeah! Sing with me!<em>

_Must I? That Earth show is literally for four year olds, you know.  
><em>

_It's colourful and educational! Come on, don't be boring!_

_...we went through the atmosphere and into deep space._

_We did it!_

_Yes, well, enough quoting the television show for young human children. It seems we're free of the influence of planet Earth, at least for now._

_...we did it! Yeaaaah!_

_For _now._ Goku can teleport, remember?_

_...I... yeaahh... woo..._

_So I wholly expect him to come for us at some point in the near future. We'll probably want to get ready for that, and any other anomalous events that might happen in that time._

_...we _did it.

_We did not "do it" just yet. Not to the extent we want. Stop fooling yourself._

_You're a buzzkill._

_I'm a realist. And realistically, there's no way we're getting off scott-free with escaping planetary exile unless we're either very strong, very lucky, or, most likely, very persuasive._

_Did Lord Buttwrench ever say we couldn't leave, though?_

_...no, I don't think he did. And nor did Prince Vegeta, as far as I'm aware; if I recall, the terms of the exile were simply that we couldn't return to Plant unless we agreed to make a public speech apologising for our behaviour at the tournament fight... though my memory is unfortunately quite foggy on that front._

_So we don't go back to Plant. Simples. Iyrk, or whatever that guy says. Oh, wait, where are we going right now?_

_I believe it was... New Namek. New, hm? I wonder what happened to Old Name- oh that's right, Frieza's downfall, I remember now. Can't believe I forgot such a big event... though it _was_ before our time, so I suppose that's understandable._

_Don't you mean _our_ time, sis? We ARE flying out of here together. There's not just you._

_...yes, that's what I _said._ Weren't you listening?_

_What? Eh? No, not at all. I had a nice pretty tune in my head. I was listening to that. It went like "naaah-naah, naah nah-naaah... naa-naaah, naah-nu-nah nah na-nah na-naaah, na-na-na-nuh nuh nah nah naaaaaahhhhhhh..."_

_Hhrrrrrh... sure. Let's just begin training for whatever comes next._

* * *

><p><em>Alternate titles for this chapter: "Spot The References", "We Update Less Often Than Turbulence" and "I'm So So Sorry This Took Eight Months or So to Start Being a Thing". But yeah, it's out now; whether you've seen this story's earlier chapters before, or you're a new viewer (and either way, I urge you to read the earlier chapters, since I've fixed a few things in them, not least of which was a gigantic plothole waiting to happen), feel free to like, comment and subscribe- oh wait that's YouTube. Aha, aha. I kid. No, but follow and favourite, and tell me what you thought of this chapter. In the meantime, have a special bonus feature!<em>

**The Castes and Classes of Modern Plantian Society (as applied to Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans specifically)  
><strong>

For Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans alike, power is just about everything - the more power you have, the more things you can do in society (insofar as one can manage to avoid committing any sort of criminal activity, lest the ire of the nearest Mother Drone be wrought upon them). As such, the so-called "classes" of their society, based off of those previously present in pre-civilised Saiyan society, are divided in terms of power brackets, with a higher power level (as determined by a standard Planet Trade Organisation scouter) meaning a higher class meaning more privileges. Naturally, this system does not apply to Tuffles, who possess little to no natural ki ability; nor does it apply to any location other than Plant, as the very few Saiyan hybrids that have lived their lives outside the realms of Plant either do not know of this system of castes, or do not care what it signifies about them due to their circumstances. In ascending order of power and respect, the classes are as follows:

**[N/A] - Below 1000 (one thousand) PL:** This caste is not officially named, even by the standards used to describe higher classes. This is because, in the minds of most Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans, anyone in this day and age who allows themself to remain so weak relative to the rest of society is not worthy of even the minimal respect a third-class Saiyan might receive; the standard power level of a Saiyan without any sort of training or zenkai boost often lies at around 400-600 PL, and one is therefore considered a primitive by one's fellows if one has not advanced beyond this level, despite the attempts of the government to quell such assertions. Through a combination of societal pressures, primarily involving forced poverty and typically violent deaths of those who fail to advance, it is all but unheard of for anyone to occupy this underclass who is not relatively young - and, in a rare case of leniency on the part of both groups, Saiyan and Neo-Saiyan youths are considered exempt from this system until they are officially adults at sixteen years old, though most break through at least the 1000 PL barrier long before this is ever a problem.

**Third-Class - 1000 (one thousand) PL minimum:** The lowest official class in Saiyan society, Third-Class Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans are, whilst not necessarily looked well upon, at least considered to be wholly sapient beings. However, as is frequently the case with the lower classes of any society, they tend to occupy the roles of cheap menial labour, and can usually be found working at food processing plants and other locations where physical strength is a must, alongside others of this class and those Tuffles who have, for whatever reason, decided they have no desire to engage in more intellectual pursuits. Indeed, a rare few Saiyans who are not at all concerned with combat and personal power often deliberately choose to train up to the bare minimum requirements for this caste, then deliberately stop there so as to remain relatively out of the way of any sort of conflict.

**Second-Class - 10000 (ten thousand) PL minimum:** Similar in function to the so-called "lower-middle class" present on planets such as Earth, Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans existing at this level of power are less prone to facing legal issues than their Third-Class cousins, and, whilst it is possible for those who are so inclined to hunt for their own food from the wildlife present on Plant, they often take up craftsmanship or other semi-professional occupations to pay for their lifestyles, since other aspects of civilised society usually require money of some sort- and few Saiyans who recall how they lived before induction into Tuffle society believe that regressing to their former primal state is a good thing. To wit, the majority of Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans exist in this caste, since both frequently train themselves to improve their own power, though the latter far more so than the former for sheer will to prove that they're superior to others; the power level of a typical Saiyan might be expected to lie at around 20000, whilst most Neo-Saiyans will likely have at least twice that, though their rarity even by Saiyan standards may skew the actual mean power level of their race somewhat.

**First-Class - 100000 (one hundred thousand) PL minimum:** Considered the upper-middle class of Saiyan and Neo-Saiyan society, it is perhaps ironic that the inhabitants of this class are often less intellectual than their lessers - many Saiyans who inhabit this class or above are ex-soldiers in the army of the deceased Arcosian overlord known as Frieza, whilst those who aren't have usually sacrificed pursuits towards mental improvement to acquire this class. With little else to their name, first-class Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans typically stick with what they know, becoming bodyguards and fighters for both on- and off-world groups, and usually continuing to train themselves to the exclusion of any other options.

**Elite - 1000000 (one million) PL minimum:** Reaching the upper class of Elite is a momentous feat for any Saiyan, even if it is overshadowed by the existence of even greater levels of power (which, incidentally, cannot actually be accessed without first going through the Elite class). As with first-class Saiyans, Elites are often relatively dull-minded compared to their second- and third-class brethren, frequently taking up jobs as extremely high-level soldiers in armies of all sorts. Compared to first-class Saiyans and Neo-Saiyans, however, the Elite class is substantially more intellectual; such immense power often requires either a massive zenkai boost or an initial genetic advantage in the first place, and reaching this level at all implies that it didn't actually take as long as one might suspect, which may or may not leave the lucky Saiyan with more time to learn themselves something about this reality. Or they could just keep training...

**Double-Elite - 10000000 (ten million) PL minimum:** Effectively the end game for any non-Super Saiyan with enough time on their hands and enough effort to put in, members of the Double-Elite class are actually extraordinarily rare compared to most other classes, simply due to the fact that any given Saiyan or Neo-Saiyan is more likely to unlock the Super Saiyan form and acquire a titanic relative power boost than hit a power level of merely ten million by their own merits. Additionally, Double-Elites are often not afforded much more respect than standard Elites, and depending on the point of view of an observer, may even warrant less. "After all," they say, conveniently ignoring that Double-Elites do still wield fairly monstrous power by the standards of even most Saiyans, "who's so pathetic that they can't unlock the Super Saiyan form for that long, eh?" In any case, this is the highest class available to non-Super Saiyans, as diminishing returns from training begin to take effect at this level; no Double-Elite is known to have a power level of more than fifteen million, and most of the few that exist have much lower than this.

**Super-Elite - Super Saiyan form unlocked****:** The pinnacle of Saiyan and Neo-Saiyan society, a shining golden crown of power and glory that all Elites strive to one day take hold of and lord over their inferiors. Naturally, Super-Elite class members are effectively the nobility of Plant by Saiyan standards - any one Super-Elite is dozens, if not hundreds of times stronger than the vast majority of the rest of their race, this often applying even before they transform, and it is all but impossible for any number of lesser foes to overcome a Super-Elite once they transform. Thus, they are all but immune to backlash when unaccompanied, and if so inclined, will often get away with crimes right up to murder if a Mother Drone is not present to stop them (though of course, they usually are). Of course, since they could quite handily obliterate entire planets if so desired, their living expenses are more often than not subsidised by the Plantian government in order to keep them subdued, and a Saiyan or Neo-Saiyan who achieves Super Saiyan young may well live their entire lives in the lap of luxury... given the violent nature of the Super Saiyan form, of course, these lives may not actually be very long. The turnover rate of the Super-Elite class is relatively fast, as members are killed off on a regular basis, either by each other or by patrolling Mother Drones when they do something to warrant execution, and subsequently replaced by those Elites who break through to Super Saiyan to replace them.

No official classes exist above the level of Super-Elite - since the forms of Super Saiyan 2 and 3 are not public knowledge, and no other Saiyans or Neo-Saiyans are known to have access to them, Double- and Triple-Super-Elite are not considered classes even by the few who do possess those forms, and Super-Elite is therefore the highest class available to any Saiyan or Neo-Saiyan, with further improvements in status requiring some degree of actual social influence, such as induction into the political affairs of Plant or even the democratic board that determines how Plant is run, though any Saiyan, Neo-Saiyan or Tuffle can in fact strive for such a position.


End file.
